Shawl in a Ball #2

I've finished the second shawl in a ball (see previous post on the first shawl in a ball), this time with my newly acquired garter bars, and let me just say that this is definitely the tool for this project.

Just to refresh your memory, this project was inspired by a suggestion from Judie based on this blog post that describes an off-centre triangular shawl.  Because you decrease one stitch every other row on the left, and increase one stitch every row on the right, the working stitches move the project across the bed to the right until you run out of needles on which to increase and have to shift the project back over the left to keep going.  For my first project, I used waste yarn to accomplish this, but as the shawl gets wider the frequency with which this shift to the left has to happen increases (along with the number of stitches that have to be shifted), so the waste yarn method gets pretty tedious quite quickly.  So, garter bar to the rescue!

I bought these from Kriskrafter and am very happy with them.  Take a minute and check out this great review on YouTube by Diana Sullivan. 

Each of the long bars are 75 stitches, so screwed together they cover the entire bed of my SK860.  I was hoping the first "shift" would happen at or before 75 stitches so I wouldn't have to join the two bars together the first time, but believe it or not I had 76 stitches in work when I ran out of working needles on the right.  Go figure.

You can see the orphaned stitch on the left of this photo, so I attached the two bars together, which was very easy and straight forward, and successfully moved the stitches back over to the far left of the bed so I could continue my increasing on the right.  The whole maneuver took less than a minute.  In total, I had to make the shift four times before I ran out of available stitches on the bed (and ran low on yarn, wanting to save some for fringe).  One note, if you've watched the video above and plan to use a garter bar for this project, remember that we're just moving the stitches to the left, not knitting garter stitch, so there is no need to flip the work, just shift it.  Your carriage and working yarn will remain on the same side of the needle bed as they were before.






To the left is a photo of the shawl with all the stitches transferred to the garter bar (you will probably have to look closely to see that)

Here's another picture of the stitches again transferred to the garter bar.  You can tell it's a little further along in the knitting than the picture above as I've moved further through the colour gradation.

And here's the finished project, although I haven't blocked it yet as I'm waiting for a fine day to be able to put it outside on the deck to air dry a little quicker.  This is great yarn considering how inexpensive it is.  This particular colourway is called "Mindful Mauve" in case you're interested, but they have many great colours to choose from.

I have one ball left, called "Restful Rainbow", and although I am very tempted to make one more shawl in the same pattern I have been using, I will resist that temptation and experiment with some lace next. 

The pattern that I have my eye on is a hand knit one, available for free on Ravelry and Craftsy, called the Kohi Shawl by Pineapple Bird Knits.  That's the plan anyway, always subject to change or a better suggestion!

I hope that your knitting is enjoyable, productive and just challenging enough to be interesting but not frustrating.  Leave me a comment below on what you're working on, if you have any suggestions for the final shawl in a ball project, or suggestions for future projects!

Nancy