Knitting

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Simple Shawls for Winter and Beyond

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I really just want to knit nothing but shawls right now. They’re so fun, and a great way to build different knitting skills with something that you can wear and use all year long (if you’re cold all the time like I am).

Here are a few shawls on the easier side of the spectrum that have caught my eye recently.

Looking for more amazing shawl patterns? Check out these crochet patterns we found on Etsy.

The Simple Lace Shawl from Lion Brand Yarn uses three panels of knitting, simple eyelets and a multicolored yarn for an easy pattern that doesn’t look as easy as it is.

The Botany Lace Shawl from Araucania (available free with membership at Love Knitting) looks pretty easy, too, and the ruffled edging keeps it from being or looking basic but still doesn’t add that much fuss.

Universal Yarn’s Stained Glass Triangular Shawl (PDF) is another pretty project using a multicolored yarn. It’s worked in tiers of garter stitch triangles, giving the project a chunky, warm look.  Looking for more Stained glass style knitting patterns? Check these out on Etsy.

And the Shadow Capelet from Blue Sky Alpacas (PDF), though technically a poncho, is a great little project that uses reverse stockinette stitch stripes for lots of interest and texture. I really want to knit this one in a bunch of different colors.

See anything you like? I’d love to hear about it! And come back tomorrow for shawls that kick up the skill level a little more but are still great fun to knit.

 

Looking to chat about Knitting and Patterns? Check out our Facebook Knitting page and our Facebook group dedicated to Knitting and Knitting Patterns.

Looking for more amazing shawl patterns? Check out these Knitting patterns we found on Etsy.

Comments

  3. I have made the Stain Glass Triangle Shawl. It was lovely & my shawl loving daughter treasures it BUT, the pattern is incorrect. I found the pattern on Ravelry & there were all kinds of comments from people, who had made it, about needing to stretch the shawl (when they blocked it, which is a must with this shawl) to make it the right size. Bad. I then checked the stitches per inch against the supposed width & length this would produce. The pattern was incorrect & more diamonds need to be added in the first row to give the right width & also the right length because of the added diamonds. I contacted Universal yarns ( a very strange site) about the pattern being incorrect but they never got back to me. I also posted a heads up on the Ravelry comments section on this project. Don’t be put off by what I have written, just make the corrections, by adding extra diamonds to the first row (using stitches per. inch rule) & away you go.I also made it with the Poems Socks yarn & it is truly beautiful with its subtle gradation from one colour into another. It you think it through this shawl can be also made as a modular knit which will mean you don’t have to stitch it all together at the end. Have to work on a pattern for this I think.

Have you read?

Knit a Leopard Print Shawl and Learn about Yarn Substitution

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations. 

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind. 

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca. 

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl. 

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions. 

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic). 

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only. 

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]