Finished object file: Campside Shawl | Nunnaba Artisan Yarn Gradient

One of the great knitting moments in life are when you finish a project and it becomes an immediate favourite wardrobe item. My recently finished Campside Shawl designed by Alicia Plummer is one of those items. I have been wearing this shawl a lot and it's just a delight.

The pattern for this shawl was offered as a free pattern on the Pom pom Magazine blog about a year ago and you can access it here. The post also shares Alicia's story of what inspired her in the design for this shawl. Campside is reminiscent of her childhood summers spent at a family cabin. For her the pattern connects with her memories of comfort, warmth and shelter. It is a deeply personal story but one that resonates with all and when I wear my Campside I feel wrapped in soft comforting wool and it warms my heart.

The pattern has a few issues making it challenging to follow but nothing that an experienced knitter can't work out. It only has charts for the eyelet lace pattern and sometimes the lack of written instructions can leave you making some deductive leaps with the knitting. Basically there are some points in the charts where you could deduce that an extra eyelet and decrease is missing but you can also knit it as charted too and it doesn't really affect the overall look of the shawl. I figured at the end of the day, this was offered as a free pattern, I shouldn't get too uppety about errors. 

For this great wardrobe staple I used some deliciously soft high micron merino from White Gum Wool that had been hand dyed by Nunnaba Artisan Yarn into a gradient colourway called 'Blue Jay'. When I ordered this yarn I requested that the gradient colours be spread over the 300g as a long gradient. I didn't want to receive 3 skeins of standard gradient dyed yarn because that would make a bigger project slightly more challenging. 

When a gradient comes in a single skein all the colour transitions are contained in that single length of yarn. This poses the challenge of finding the perfect pattern to match with the yarn; where all colours will be utilized. If you find a small project that requires approximately the same yardage as one skein of the yarn then perfect, you'll get all the colours and no leftovers. However, when you do this you might find yourself limited to small projects like kids garments or hats because you won't have enough yardage to make anything bigger. 

Over time I have figured out a few ways to work larger projects with gradients, so here are my suggestions. One way is to alternate skeins of the gradient and depending of how many skeins you are prepared to juggle you can double, triple, (or even more) your yardage. 

Another idea is to add on skeins of the trim colour. The trim when a dyer offers a semi solid colourway that is the same as the outside colour of the gradient skein. When knitting, you get to the end of the gradient but need more yardage you can continue knitting in the trim colour so that the colour transition is not interrupted. 

If the trim option is not available you can just use the gradient as a feature and then finish off the pattern with a neutral colour. For example Kelly Brooker's Conscious pattern is designed with gradients in mind. The yoke can be knit out of a gradient and then the rest of the pullover is finished off with something else.

Then lastly, there is what I did with my Campside project; specifically ordering a long gradient so that the colours were spread across the whole 300g of yarn. It made knitting this shawl so much easier because I had one large cake of yarn to knit through that needed no alternating or changing of colours. 

There is so much to love about this shawl and I must say the result is exactly what I wanted. What I have achieved here has helped me be less afraid of working with gradients and given me many ideas for how to tackle similar projects in the future.

What experience do you have with knitting with gradient yarns? Have you tackled the challenges differently? Do share your thoughts and tips.

What to knit Wednesday: Shawls

The 'Mara' shawl is a great staple wardrobe item

It's time for another 'What to knit Wednesday' post and today I thought I would talk shawls because I was recently asked by a church friend to knit a shawl for her - a commissioned project. To be honest I have only ever completed 2 shawls and I currently have one in the works but here are some patterns that I love.

1. You can't go past the classic style of the Mara shawl. This is a free Madelinetosh pattern that is designed for DK weight yarn but gauge is not as important with shawls so you can easily adapt it for another yarn weight without needing to swatch.

I knit it with the suggested yarn and followed the guide, buying 3 skeins of Madelinetosh Tosh DK. I must have misread my measurements because I ran out of yarn to bind off and had to patch it with some scrap yarn of a similar colour but the same weight.

Regardless, I love this shawl and I love this yarn. It's simple garter stitch pattern makes it a perfect everyday item and a staple of my wardrobe.

I knit this Hyla Brook for my mum last Christmas

2. The second shawl that I knit was for my mum last Christmas. I knit her a 'Hyla Brook' designed by Paula Emons-Fuessle using some Quince & Co. Tern. However, I was short of 2 skeins so the shawl turned out more like a shawlette. I love this pattern because even though it is a fingering weight knit it worked up pretty quickly with an easily memorised pattern. Another great thing about this pattern is that Paula has also created a checklist to help keep track of row counts and the percentage completed. So, because I didn't have a full 2 skeins I could use the checklist to track how far from the end I was and judge whether I needed to cast off early since I was running out of yarn.

3. On my needles right now is a 'The Age of Brass and Steam' shawl by Orange Flower Yarn. I'm pairing this with 1 skein of Australian independent dyer, Augustbird's gradient 8ply. This is my third attempt to use this yarn because it is not easy to find a pattern that will showcase a gradient yarn best. I'm hoping that this shawl will be a good pattern because according to Ravelry it only needs up to 240 yards/ 219 metres of DK weight yarn. 1 skein of the Augustbird 8ply has 258 yards/ 236 metres so theoretically when I knit up this shawl I will be able to go through each of the gradient colour transitions.

Augustbird White Gum Wool 8ply in 'Allegro' colourway and the pattern for the 'Bella' shawl in the background

4. I initially hoped to use the gradient yarn to knit a 'Bella' shawl. I even got so far as casting on and knitting the first 20 rows or so before I realised that this pattern was not knitting this shawl top down but actually starting at the bottom left hand corner and knitting across. I decided to frog it because I didn't want my gradient going diagonally up from the left hand corner. What I needed was a top down pattern for a triangle shawl if I wanted to maximise the visual effect of the gradient.

However, all is not wasted with this pattern. When I gave my friend some shawl patterns to choose from she has chosen this 'Bella' pattern. So, I'm quite excited that I will still be able to knit this and learn some new techniques while I'm being commissioned to make it.

5. My fifth shawl pattern is Alicia Plummer's 'Campside' pattern. She designed this as a free pattern for Pompom magazine's blog last year and it is a generous sized triangle shawl that incorporates 3 different lace eyelet designs. I wanted to knit this with the gradient yarn but it needs a whopping 780 yards/ 713 metres of DK weight yarn and that meant I would need 3 skeins of the Augustbird gradient. I wanted the gradient to transition once through each colour so that meant that I would have to keep alternating the three skeins every couple of rows and I in the end I was turned off by how cumbersome that was going to be.

Some 'Bubbles Darling'

For now I have queued this project and I think I might knit it up with the 2 skeins of 'Bubbles Darling' Red Riding Hood Yarns that I picked up at the Nunnaba birthday sale.

As you can see I've got some shawl knitting ahead of me. You may think when am I going to wear all these shawls but I'm starting to see a correlation between being a yarn addict and a shawl addict - it's a bit of a reoccurring trend in many of the other crafty/ knitterly bloggers that I follow.

What are your favourite shawl patterns?

I also have 2 skeins of the Augustbird gradient left after I knit the 'Brass and Steam' shawl, so, please share your pattern suggestions for gradients too.