Stitch of the Week: Feather and Fan

A few days of warmer weather (followed rapidly by cooler, rainy days) has me in the mood for spring, and for some reason spring knitting means lace to me.

I’m not the kind of girl who’s going to spend months of my life and tons of concentration on an intricate lace shawl, but I do like the look of eyelets and openwork from time to time.

If you’re new to lace knitting or just want to try a stitch that is quick, relatively easy and not too fussy to knit or to wear, check out Feather and Fan, also known as Old Shale.

This pattern uses increases and decreases that are bunched together in the row rather than having an increase right next to its decrease. This causes the edge of the work to ripple in a pretty way (but that rippling means if you’re knitting something like a scarf you need to knit it in halves so that both ends of the scarf match).

I’ve used Feather and Fan in my Feather and Fan stole, which is really just a wide scarf worked in three colors, and on a washcloth.

This is such a popular pattern that just searching for free patterns with a photo on Ravelry you get just over 200 results, so I can’t possibly highlight them all, but here are couple of pretties you might want to check out:

I adore this Feather and Fan hat designed by Betty P. Balcomb for Cascade Yarns and their Baby Alpaca Chunky Yarn (scroll down the page to find the PDF download link).
Jean Miller’s Feather and Fan cowl, available for free download on Ravelry, is a great one-skein beginning lace project.
This short scarf by Kelly Faller is another beauty that would make a great gift. It’s kind of wide as written, but if you know that the stitch pattern is a multiple of 18 stitches, you can make a narrower and thus longer scarf with no problem.
Wendy D. Johnson used Feather and Fan to great effect on the leg of a pair of toe-up socks (search for feather and fan socks on this page to find the download link).
And then there’s the giant stash-busting Feather and Fan comfort shawl, worked from the tip out as wide as you want it to be. There are some really lovely examples in the pattern’s Flickr group.

Have you ever used Feather and Fan? I’d love to hear how you used it.

Not too long ago I did a test knit for another designer that was for a cabled cardigan. It’s really cozy and nice but it just about broke me in a ton of different ways. I couldn’t get gauge, which I suppose is my own problem, but mainly I was somehow both bored and forced to pay attention at the same time.

Because it used the same cable all over, I always had to know what row I was on, but nine out of ten of those rows, nothing in particular was going on. So I couldn’t stop paying attention, but what I needed to attend to was boring.

It may have ruined me for knitting cabled sweaters, but maybe I just need something that’s more engaging. Like this Modern Aran Cardigan pattern from Lion Brand Yarn.

This is a reworking of an old pattern from their archives, and you can tell that form the classic look of the cables and the oversized feel (nothing cropped about this one!). It has allover cables, but like a classic Aran sweater it’s not the same cable, so you’ll have to pay attention to what row you’re on and what cable turns happen for which cables on that row.

Because of this, it’s considered an intermediate knitting pattern, but if you’re comfortable working from multiple charts at once it shouldn’t be a problem for you. There are three different charts and seven different cable moves.

Also because the pattern is so big and boxy there are only two sizes available, with a finished chest measurement of either 49 or 63 inches (that’s 124.5 or 160 cm). It’s up to you to decide how much ease you would like and whether that will work for your body.

The pattern uses worsted weight yarn (and calls for another classic, Lion Brand Fisherman’s Wool). It calls for six buttons and includes pockets to make it extra cozy.

This one looks like a great winter project to make and to wear if you’re up for a bit of a challenge. You can grab the free pattern or buy a kit with the yarn needed direct from Lion Brand Yarn.

[Photo: Lion Brand Yarn]

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