Shelda's Adventures with Lace

My "Adagio" is finished!

Hurray! I actually finished knitting this shawl months ago, but just hadn't gotten around to weaving in ends and dressing it. But someone asked about this shawl on Ample-Knitters, and after I mentioned that mine was nearly complete, I got lots of questions. That finally inspired me to actually finish it and make a blog entry.

I'm reasonably happy with the shawl, but will know more after it dries and I can try it on. One of the "claims to fame" of this particular shawl is the shoulder shaping that hopefully makes it hang and drape better than the standard triangle shawl. I've been fiddling with different shawl shapings for some time, and this was my most recent experiment. Candace Eisner Strick designed this shawl (and its sister shawl, the "Allegro") to have more of a "wing" shape. You can see more examples, and order patterns and kits from Candace at Strickwear.

I took a workshop from Candace in St. Louis and got to try on her original "Adagio." I really liked it, but I could tell I would need my shawl to be quite a bit larger/longer than her sample. I ordered the kit (six skeins) and three extra skeins of Koigu KPPPM in black/raspberry. I eventually ended up ordering two more skeins, for a total of 11.

You start at the center back of the shawl, increasing stitches on every odd numbered row. The shaping at the shoulders is created by doing more increases for the first rows of the shawl than the standard increases necessary for a triangle. I wanted my shawl to be even roomier than the pattern, so I continued my extra increases for more rows than stated in the pattern. I also added extra rows to the pattern at the end, doing several more repeats than called for.

I usually keep really good notes on things like this, but I can't seem to find my notes on this shawl anywhere! Perhaps there's a sheet of notes "hiding" somewhere, but at the moment I can't be more specific. Sorry about that! It doesn't hardly help to do experiments if you don't keep notes! Perhaps I can reconstruct what I did from the shawl itself. I'll try.

I do know that I didn't find the extra increases at the front edge to do precisely what I had in mind for the shawl shaping. It does get you further along the path to a comfortable shaping, but I think it still needs "tinkering." I realized as I was laying the shawl out today that part of the problem is that all the increases are right at the front edge, so that edge just keeps getting further and further out. Not a problem, really, but the edge isn't really where I need extra room! It seems to get longer, rather than making the shawl deeper. I was wondering about making the increases further into the body of the shawl instead.

I need to figure out how to use Adobe Illustrator and draw some shawl shapes to illustrate what I'm talking about. Perhaps that would help me figure some things out. I suppose I could just draw on a piece of paper, but what fun would that be?!

One of the elements that I loved about this shawl was its edging. It's a little hand-knitted ruffle, and came out very nicely. I had admired it on Candace's sample, and was very happy with mine as well. Here's a detail photo.

Audiobook I'm listening to: Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague, written by Geraldine Brooks, read by Josephine Bailey.

Posted by Shelda at August 15, 2004 07:13 PM