Knit a Super Cozy Triangular Shawl

There’s so much to love about the Lilitha shawl pattern from Bigger than Life Knits. It’s a little asymmetrical triangle, which is probably the easiest kind of triangle to wear. There’s not a lot of excess fabric and you can almost wear it like a scarf to keep you warm.

And this one definitely will keep you warm. It’s worked with a superfine yarn combined with mohair, making a weight like a DK weight. The mohair gives it a fuzzy texture that’s nice and warm, though of course you can also just knit with a DK weight yarn of your choice if you’d rather.

The majority of the shawl is stockinette stitch, but the long lower edge of the triangle has a lace edging that almost looks like hearts stacked on each other.

You can get the pattern from Noma Ndlovu aka Bigger than Life Hand Knits, on Ravelry.

Speaking of how to wear shawls, though, I was looking back at some old posts about triangular shawls and I found one with a dead link that was about how to style triangular scarves.

While this is more of an issue when you have a really large triangle (or a large shawl of any shape, really) it’s good to think about the different ways you could wear a shawl in case you normally always wear your shawls the same way.

I found this post from Berroco about different ways to wear shawls, which includes both watercolor illustrations and photos of different shawls shown worn in different ways.

You can also use the pattern itself to see different ways to wear that particular shawl. For instance the Lilitha pattern shows it worn like a bandana, with the tail to the front or the back, and almost like a poncho. There are so many different options!

[Photo: Noma Ndlovu.]

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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