Testing at the Garden Party

I just finished my second test-knit for Laura (Fiber Dreams) and I’m so in love with this shawl, I’m keeping it.

Pattern: Garden Party by Laura Patterson (Ravelry)

Yarn: JaggerSpun Zephyr Wool-Silk 2/18; Colorway: Ruby

Needles: Knit Picks Options Harmony 3.75 mm / US 5

Modifications: One that I thought was no big deal, but came to bite me in the butt when I was blocking.

There are 2 other knitters who also test-knit this shawl, and the pattern is released and ready for PDF download.

Other than just the overall beauty of the shawl with all the lovely flowers and leaves, the best part of it is the construction. Not that I’ve knit a lot of shawls, but I’ve never seen anything like it. There’s a center panel of leaves that you knit first and it seems like it’s just going to end up being a rectangle, but when you get to the end of that section, it ends in a point. Kind of like a long rectangle with a triangle at the end.

Next you knit the rows on the right side of the shawl while you pick up the stitches from the center section. As you get to that center point of the rectangle, you stop and put those stitches on a stitch holder. Since I was knitting with the Knit Picks Options cables, I was able to just leave the cable there, take of the needle points and start the next section.

The left side is knit exactly like the right picking up those center panel stitches until you get to the center point and then you join the waiting stitches from the right side and continue knitting back and forth while working decreases to shape the triangular point of the shawl.

The final step is the large border that you start on one side of the shawl and knit back and forth while picking up the stitches along the edge of the shawl until you come to the center. Here’s where I screwed up.

Somehow my counting was “off” (won’t be the first time, won’t be the last) and as I approached the center point, I discovered that I was on the wrong row and the center border panel wasn’t going to be centered at the triangles point. So I tried to fudge. Let me emphasize that word “try”. Instead of figuring out where I went wrong and ripping back, I continued on, and omitted a lot of the “knitting into the same stitch twice” rows. Because of this, when I blocked, I didn’t have enough ease at the point, so I had to stretch that yarn into submission like it was on some kind of torture device from medieval times. Although it worked overall, it was a great learning lesson and I’ll never do it again.

Obviously after you get through the center point, you continue knitting the border along the next side and then block and enjoy the masterpiece you created. I’m very pleased with how this shawl turned out, but honestly all the credit goes to the designer. Bravo Laura!