my creative space

Just ten rows from casting off well over three hundred stitches with a nice stretchy cast off. Knit 2, pass first stitch over the second and return stitch on right hand needle to left needle. Repeat till finished.

I first saw this cast off on the Ishbel shawl from Ysolda. It works well for this type of shawl where the cast off edge is the top of the shawl and allows blocking that edge into a straight line. The shawl has the typical increases for this sort of pattern. A stitch is increased at each end on every row and an increase either side of the centre stitch on knit rows. So six stitches increase over every two rows. The centre increases are omitted in this pattern once the lace part begins.

This is the Travelling Woman shawl designed by Liz Abinante. Wool is 4 ply Luxury from Bendigo. I enjoy knitting with this wool, it runs pleasantly through the fingers and I like the drape of it for a shawl. The designer offer a small equation, simple enough in reality, for enlarging the shawl I could have worked it out, but used her suggestion. I thought the dimensions of her finished shawl were a bit on the small side, so I added two repeats across the width of the shawl and have done an extra twenty four rows in the length. That's another two repeats of the horseshoe pattern. Hopefully when blocked it will be about the size I want.

I have set this post on the schedule to post later. Hopefully by then, I'll have finished it.