Knit a Lavish Shawl with Lace and Bobbles

Full disclosure: I’m not much of a bobble person. I don’t love knitting them, and I don’t usually like the way they look on knit fabric. I’m not going to yuck anyone else’s yum, but they’re generally just not for me.

But when I saw the Mossblossom shawl pattern from Wool & Pine I thought maybe I had misjudged bobbles. Because these are pretty combined with lace and textured ripples that make a design with a luxurious look.

This large rectangular shawl uses a couple of skeins (about 700 or 800 yards, or 640-732 meters) or fingering weight yarn, and it looks like just the thing for those special skeins you’ve been saving (or add a couple to your holiday gift list so you can treat yourself!).

Despite all the details in this shawl, it’s actually pretty easy to knit. It’s a rectangle with repeating lace, wavy garter stitch ridges and bobble stitches, with wavy lace edges to make it even more fun.

One really cool thing about this design is that, when the knitting is done, you stitch a tiny seam at the corner after folding it in half. This little 2 inch/5 cm seam turns the shawl into more of a cowl, helping it stay on your body and giving it more of a triangular shape when you wear it. Of course you don’t have to do it that way, but it does make a big difference in how the shawl wears.

There’s a video on the pattern page on Ravelry that shoes you just how to wear it if my description doesn’t help.

Speaking of Ravelry, you can grab the pattern there or at the Wool & Pine website.

As a total aside, is yellow the color of the season? Just the other day I shared Mabel’s Sweater, which is also yellow. Of course you can use whatever color you want, but it sure is pretty!

[Photo: Wool & Pine]

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.

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