Knit a Shawl with a Quilt-Styled Star

I was just talking the other day about my love for quilt inspired knitting projects, and then another one came upon my screen: the Clint pattern from Natasja Hornby.

This large boomerang shawl calls for sport weight yarn in four colors, though you could use heavier yarn and make it even bigger. It’s already plenty large, though, at 75 inches/190 cm across the top of the triangle and 23.5 inches/60 cm deep.

The pattern begins with the modular colorwork star design that makes up the center back of the shawl. The blocks are worked individually and attached to each other seamlessly as you knit. They’re bias knit squares worked in garter stitch, and there’s a video tutorial showing how to join them together.

Once the star portion has been worked, you pick up stitches for the upper and lower parts of the center block, then for the sides. The top edge of the shawl is finished with an attached I-cord, while stitches are picked up along the bottom sides to work the scalloped edging.

There’s a lot going on in this project but at the same time the finished shawl looks simple somehow. Maybe it’s the rustic color choices and the simplicity of the garter stitch squares that gives a sort of feeling of ease to the look.

One of the projects on Ravelry says that nothing about the shawl was hard, but it was interesting, and I think that’s what I mean, too, is that it’s interesting but also has an ease about it, like it’s quite natural that it turned out the way it turned out. Which I know as a designer is actually a hard thing to do!

The designer describes it as rhythmic and soothing as well as engaging and fun because of the modular design. I think all of that is true, too. It just looks like it would be a lot of fun to knit and to wear.

Learn more and get a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Natasja Hornby]

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I don’t even know what to say about this amazing knitting pattern. The Bestiary Scarf from Monstra & Mirabilia is so full of details it’s a little intimidating to talk about.

It features, as the designer describes it, an “artistic encyclopaedia of Western mythical creatures.”

The pattern includes a dragon, harpy, Medusa, chimaera, centauress, phoneix, kraken, mermaid, sew serpent, cyclops, wyvern, Pegasus, amphiptere and amphibaena. (It’s a good thing there’s a photo of the proejct with everything labelled because I definitely didn’t know the names for everything.) It’s also designed like a landscape, with water and land creatures toward the bottom ends and sky creatures toward the top.

The dragon is at the center and is worked sideways so it will show as upright when you wear it.

The scarf is worked in double knitting, so the colorwork appears in the opposite colors on the other side.

It’s worked in light fingering weight yarn (on size 0 US or 2mm knitting needles) and the colorwork is shown in charts. The pattern also includes some video tutorials and written instructions to help you along. The designer says the pattern is for intermediate knitters, and “advanced beginners may succeed with patience and the help of the video tutorials.”

When I was an advanced beginner this kind of a pattern would have brought me to tears, but if you love a challenge, and a project that you’ll wear and get tons of astonished reactions every time, this is the project for you. And of course if you have a few double knitting projects under your belt and are comfortable reading charts, this project shouldn’t be hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s fast. But lots of great things take time, and that’s never stopped us before, right?

You can get a copy of this pattern from Monstra & Mirabilia on Ravelry.

[Photo: Monstra & Mirabilia ]

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