A shawl for the adventurous knitter, using stranded technique, steeks, and Magic Balls.

Many thanks to Ann Myhre (“Pinneguri “, or the “Needle Lady”), whose ideas for shawl construction I follow in this design. Thanks also to Heather Desserud, whose design for her Ruba’iyat Mittens provided inspiration for the stitch patterns I used. The work of Christel Seyfarth has been influential also.

The basic plan: This is a shawl knitted using the stranding technique, worked in the round using steeks. Only two colors are used per row. The background reds in the body of the shawl are wound into Magic Balls. The shawl is worked from the bottom up, allowing you to knit it to the size you prefer. When you get to the top of the shawl, you continue on with the upper striped border. Then the long steek is cut open, and you pick up stitches along the lower sides and bottom. These stitches are joined in a steek to knit the remainder of the border. When the short border steek is cut, you sew the border seams at the upper two corners . The border is folded in half to the inside and hemmed, enclosing the long steek edges and rendering them invisible.

Size: 75 inches (190.5 cm) wide by 38 inches (96.5 cm) long. But since you start at the bottom and knit upwards on the shawl until it is the size you want, you can easily customize it. The yarn requirements specified will leave you with leftovers, so you should be able to knit a larger shawl if you wish.

Gauge: 32 stitches per 4 inches (10 cm), 32 rows per 4 in (10 cm). But it’s not critical to match this exactly.

Needles: Size 2 (2.75mm), circulars in a variety of sizes. You’ll be glad to have 47-inch circulars for the later stages of the shawl, and you’ll want shorter ones for the earlier stages. For the beginning, you could use whatever size 2 needles you use to knit socks, such as double-points or very short circulars or longer circulars used in Magic Loop technique.

Yarn: Knitpicks Palette, 21-26 balls in a variety of red, blue, and yellow colors (exact colors specified in pattern). Palette yarn knitted at this gauge in stranded work yields a softly dense, warm, squishy fabric. You could substitute other fingering weight yarns for a different effect.

Note: This is not a project for the beginning fair isle knitter (if you’re new to stranded colorwork, knit hats, mittens, scarves, etc. till you are comfortable with how it all works). Skills used in this project: fair isle/stranding, knitting in the round, steeking, following stitch charts, increasing in pattern, picking up stitches.