I enjoy traveling and often pick up the work of local artisans. After doing a fair amount of lace knitting recently, I wanted to knit a scarf/shawl/wrap based on a painted cloth I found in South Africa several years ago.

As you can see in the photos, there are 2 pieces I’ve done. The one in 2-ply (laceweight) was knit with 3.25mm needles and measures 25x160cm. The other, which I think represents the actual painted cloth better, was knit with 4-ply (fingering) wool with 3.5mm needles. It measures 35x230cm.

I used 1 80-gram skein of 2-ply superwash wool for the lace-weight wrap, with a fair amount left over. For the fingering weight shawl I used 2 100-gram skeins, with just a bit left over.

Two identical panels are knit and are grafted together using the Kitchener stitch. There are 6 sections to each panel.

Gauge is not important for this pattern.

*** Silk blend variation
The wrap shown in the second photo was knit using around 630 yards (575 meters) of a featherweight blend of silk (50 percent), merino wool (40 percent), and kid mohair (10 percent) - that’s just over 3 balls of ICE Silk. It measures a generous 11.5 x 69 inches, or 29 x 175 cm.

Please note that an updated pdf was uploaded on October 16, 2015, with some minor edits and new photos.