I posted on facebook with photos of this loosely knit shawl and promised you the pattern. I have made a few of these. They are great to have on the back of your chair if your shoulders get cold and look like a pretty home décor item at the same time. The small size, knit on 12mm needles, is 157cm x 53cm or 62” x 21” and the large, on 15mm needles, is 178cm x 74cm or 70” x 29” blocked.
You can knit one of these in about four hours or less. I knit very fast on small needles but very, very slowly on the large single point needles that I use to make this shawl and still managed to make mine in four hours.
You will need bulky weight yarn, although I have made one of these with worsted weight. As long as it has some texture or fuzziness or some other interesting feature (think boucle) the yarn will work beautifully for this pattern. You can also hold two ends of the same or contrasting colours of worsted together to make up a bulky weight. Use your imagination and whatever you have in your stash. I tend to collect single skeins of unique yarn just because they are so pretty and this is a great project to use those up.
Materials: 135m or 150 yards of bulky yarn or the same amount of each if you are going to use two yarns held together for the 12mm or US 17 version and 150m or 170 yards for the 15mm or US 19 version. If you are not sure of the length that you have, you can weigh your yarn and start to decrease when you have used up half. I have done this a couple of times and this method works great.
Tools: one pair of 12mm, US 17 or 15mm, US 19 single point needles or a circular needle of the same size, one stitch marker big enough to fit over your large needle. Use a tied loop of yarn if your markers are too small.
Abbreviations: K = knit K2Tog = knit 2 stitches together
M1 = lift the bar between stitches, place it on the left needle and knit through the back.
Shawl: Note: All rows are knit.
Cast on three stitches and knit two rows.
Row 1: K1, place marker, M1, K to end.
Row 2: K all stitches to marker, slip marker, K1.
Repeat Rows 1 and 2 until you have at least 40 stitches on your needle, ending with row 2. If you haven’t yet used up half of your yarn and you want a bigger shawl, continue working Rows 1 and 2 until the shawl is the depth that you want it. Don’t forget it will grow when you block it so allow for that.
Row 3: K1, slip marker, K2Tog through the back loop, K to end.
Row 4: K to marker, slip marker, K1.
Repeat Rows 3 and 4 until there are three stitches left on your needle. Knit 2 rows and cast off.
Weave in your ends and block your shawl lightly if you want to retain the texture or aggressively if you want to smooth out the knitting. The white and black shawls were both knit on 15mm, US 19 needles and lightly blocked to retain the rough look of the yarn. The colourful shawl was knit with one skein of Lion Brand Landscape yarn on 12mm, US 17 needles and stretched out to block to show the pretty colour changes.
