I got inspired to try out something new after having followed the latest meeting of the Big Apple Knitters Guild - I can truly recommend you to become member of the BAKG, if you happen to be in New York City ever so often.
The knit-designer Melissa Leapman was the guest speaker last weekend. Her latest book is called “Knitting Modular Shawls, Wraps, and Stoles” and she gave us a mini course to start a shawl. When knitting the small swatch, she taught us, I got inspired to try designing and knitting my own. As holidays have kicked in, I have thus decided to spend some of my relaxed time away from the office trying to design my first scarf following Melissa’s methods. I plan to report my design debut with you on this blog: the swatches I knit, the progress (or not) and lessons learnt, and so forth.
Several considerations to begin with:
How many wedges/triangles? I will go for three, as two feel just a bit ordinary being solely one large triangle, and by having three wedges, I hope the shawl will wrap nicely around you.
I want the stitch in between each wedge to be some sort of easy cable over 3-5 stitches instead of just the ordinary one knit stitch.
To do lace, colour work or textured work? I think I will do lace with several solid knitted fabric in between the different designs. Colours depend still on which yarn I choose, but probably a solid or gradient in order not to make the shawl too busy.
Which theme if any should there be in my shawl? These days, I’m knitting a summer top with a leave pattern, called “Leaves Shell” and from flicking through my patterns I found several leaves-inspired patterns with a few flowers thrown in as well, so I will stick to my favorite nature theme. I even have a butterfly lace pattern I wonder if I can adapt in between the flowers - hardest thing is to keep the design simple, so I have to watch out not to include too many things.
Beads or not? Finally, when considering flowers, I cannot help thinking of beads. Let’s see if I find space for beads also.
And then on to swatching....
Presently, I am on vacation in Paris - getting inspiration from this beautiful city - so I do not have any of my scrap yarn with which to test. I am trying different designs with the cotton yarn I use for my mosaic squares until I hope finding the perfect yarn later on.
Let’s hope I manage to advance, as I’m not sure how much patience I will have with these trials and errors before getting the result I’m after.
