Design Your Own Shawl

On Saturday I presented the second session of my “Design Your Own Shawl” workshop series.

I genuinely enjoyed teaching these classes and all the participants seemed to have fun and learn a lot too. Everyone from the first session came back for the second one and nobody cried – so I’m calling it a success.

As this was the first time I presented these workshops I was a bit worried about whether the notes were clear enough, the structure made sense and whether there was too much or too little information to take in. It all went very smoothly and while there are a few small changes I’ll make to the class notes before I present it again, I’m very happy with how it went.

By the end of the second class, there were some really good looking shawls underway.

Everyone seemed comfortable with the process of turning a pattern from a stitch dictionary into a shawl.

And nobody seemed to mind that I turned the communal table into a particularly messy extension of my UFO* stash.

Leading up to, and during the teaching weeks I was knitting a LOT of shawls. They were only big enough for a doll but I used them as samples to show the effect of different cast ons, placement of increases and cast offs. Afterwards I was kind of tired of shawls so when I got home on Saturday I was excited about knitting something without a deadline or practical application. I just wanted to knit for fun.

So I made a decaf, gathered up the first two Barbara Walker stitch dictionaries and settled down in bed to read stitch patterns. After imagining all the things I could knit with a stitch I hadn’t used before I dove into the stash for some mustardy green merino crepe and cast on for …. a shawl.

Sometimes the best antidote for too much knitting is more knitting. In this case the best way to recover from knitting lots of shawls is to knit yet another shawl. And I’ve got to say that I’m enjoying it immensely.

*UFO – unfinished object, often found in boxes under the bed or in the linen press.