feather and fan – Lindy's Knits & Laces

Tag: feather and fan

FO: My Traveling Woman ShawlFO: My Traveling Woman Shawl

January 17, 2011 | Lindy | 0 Comments | 10:19 am

I started this shawl the end of October and finished it in December. For me, this is a fairly quick knit in a lace pattern. The pattern is free on Ravelry and is quite popular. The shawl is knit in a triangle, starting at the center neck and grows as you knit it. It has a fagotted edging along the neckline. You knit the shawl in stockinette stitch to a selected number of stitches and then begin the feather and fan lace pattern. You are given an option to increase the number of pattern repeats you do so that your shawl will be longer and then you follow the second lace pattern to make the edging.

I knit this using Forsell Superwash Wool, 3 ply yarn and size 4 needles. This yarn is closer to a lace weight yarn than a fingering weight yarn and is actually a machine knitting yarn. If I were to do this shawl again, I would definitely go with a heavier yarn as I think the lace pattern would be better in at least a fingering weight yarn. I also would use a stretchy bind-off, rather than the one given in the pattern as my bound off edge was not as stretchy as I would have liked it to be and did not scallop like I thought it should when I blocked it.

The pattern itself is a very nice one, easy to follow. The finished shawl measured 19.5 inches by 56 inches, so it is more of a scarf than a shawl.

See details on my Ravelry Projects page.

FO: Multnomah Shawlette in Crazy ZauberballFO: Multnomah Shawlette in Crazy Zauberball

September 20, 2010 | Lindy | 0 Comments | 2:31 pm

I took a little knitting detour last week and knit up the Multnomah Shawl in Zauberball Crazy yarn. Colorway is Fliederduft, which is loosely translated as “lilacs”. I had allocated this yarn to a pair of socks as part of the “10 in 2010” projects at the beginning of this year. However, after looking through many examples of socks knit with Zauberball Crazy in the Ravelry projects, I decided that I really didn’t want to knit this yarn into a pair socks. So — I switched to a shawl and ended up doing the Multnomah pattern by Kate Flagg.

The shawl was done in garter stitch until I had 265 stitches and then I started the feather and fan pattern and did 9 repeats. This pattern is a fairly quick knit. I was able to finish it up in a week and that was even with needing to frog back a couple of rows in order to have enough yarn to bind off.

Final size of the shawl — it’s actually a shawlette — was 15.5 inches by 58 inches.

I am pleased with the result. It’s an nice size for a decorative scarf/shawlette and I think the striping of the yarn is shown off to better affect than it would be in a pair of socks.

Zauberball Crazy is a self-striping, marled yarn. Which means that it stripes, but because the two plies of the yarn may be different colors, you get a somewhat “tweedy” appearance in many of the stripes. It’s a unique yarn. It is a fingering weight, superwash wool and nylon yarn and the fabric is soft and drapes nicely after blocking. I did find that the yarn had a tendency to split occasionally and there were spots where a tuft of yarn from one of the plies would stick out — these were easily removed. I might be tempted to try another colorway — but not certain what project I would use it for.

The Multnomah Shawl pattern is a very popular pattern on Ravelry and there many knitters who have made larger shawls, so when I knit this pattern again I plan to knit a larger one. The pattern is free and available for download from Ravelry (must be Ravelry member) or on Kate Flagg’s website.

I have finally figured out how to share information from my Ravelry project pages, so I am linking to this project details on my “Z Crazy” Multnomah Page.