Sometimes you find a pattern and love it and follow it to the letter. Sometimes you find inspiration in a pattern and use it as a jumping off point. And, sometimes you follow the pattern but tweek it to fit your tastes. Knitting modification is like Goldilocks and the three bears. It can take a little work to find what’s just right.
We’ve been enjoying our shawls around the shop. It’s been a mix of modifications and knitting the pattern as written. Jillian and Danielle followed the pattern as written, both using Periwinkle Sheep Watercolors with a purple-ish grey MC and a peach (Jillian) or orange (Danielle) contrast color.
Kim and Arthella used Freia Petites for their contrast color. Kim added stripes and lace repeats to get through all of her yarn’s gradient. Kim cast on and knit the medium but then did the stripes and lace repeats for the large.
Arthella modified the lace. Instead of alternating rows of k2tog and ssk, she did all her lace with k2tog and purled the wrong side rows. This gave her really smooth right-leaning lace instead of the honeycomb in the pattern.
Trudy did the stripes to transition to her second color and then continued in garter for what could have been the lace section. This allowed her to really show off the subtle color shifts in her second color which might have gotten lost in the lace. Trudy also did the lace edging in her MC.
I, Katherine, followed hte pattern for the medium. My contrast color was not a solid, and this meant that some of the detail of the lace mesh section is lost. Newer knitters: if you’re ever wondering, should I knit this intricate lace shawl in a colorway with a lot going on? Take heed: the details will be lost to an overall appearance. My modification was to do the lace edging in the semi-solid MC to give more visual impact to the project.
We’ve seen great projects on Ravelry and Instagram. You’ve still got plenty of time to make your shawl and share it. Remember, we’ll be drawing one random winner from the Ravelry thread AND another winner from Instagram. Make sure to use the hashtag #duaneparkknitalong when you share your projects on IG and you could walk away one $50 gift card richer!
Happy stitching!