A Jumper that Turned into a Shawl

 

Over the years I had collected together some shades of black, cream and grey to knit into a multi-coloured jumper.  At some point I had added a ball of cerise as a contrast colour.  This yarn has sat in a bag for years. 

The yarn is all DK – various mixtures of mainly wool and man-made fibres.  The cream is also part alpaca.  It includes some of my all-time favourite yarn - Sirdar Highlands and Islands which was a lovely mix of wool and acrylic and the equally old Hayfield’s Grampian Tweeds DK.  It also includes the more modern Stylecraft Luxury Wool Rich DK and Alpaca dk. 

During the second UK lockdown I was knitting things I was supposed to be making for other people but wanted to knit something easy  - so not a jumper – something that I didn’t notice I was knitting.  I have a couple of Jacqueline Van Dillen shawl patterns that I was going to knit one day and so I decided that “one day” had come and I would have a go at one using the yarn I had collected for the jumper. 

The design doesn’t seem to have a name but it is a biased striped shawl which was published in Designer Knitting magazine Autumn 2018.  I seem to be knitting a lot of 2018 patterns recently – probably because I have a backlog since then.  During 2019 and 2020 I didn’t really get much knitting done and my blog posts became less and less frequent.

This is the start of it.  It is knitted from point to point.

I have now finished the shawl but it needs blocking – it is still a bit curly in places.  I haven’t got the space to do it yet.   I didn’t completely stick to the pattern  - I had to make changes to fit the yarns that I had. Also when I knit the pattern again (which I intend to do) – I will make some of the sections much shorter.

I have now started another even easier shawl to make while I am working long hours in the run up to Christmas.