Saturday, August 20, 2005

Dimple Stitch Shawl Wrap




This was a long time in the making, despite being a relatively simple pattern. Mostly, it was poor preparation on my part. It starts with a very large cast-on and then decreases to its bottom point. I thought that I'd be able to make do with straight needles but, although the initial cast-on fit (just barely), it became apparent with the first line of pattern, which require a double wrap for each stitch, that I was going to need circulars. Sally offered to lend me her 5.5mms but it was about two weeks before our paths crossed again. After that, it went swimmingly... until I ran out of wool. I made this one out of 100% Alpaca and hadn't checked the yardage. So it ended up on hold until I could make a trip out to Texere and stock up again. Alpaca Select is a dream to work with and knits up beautifully as you can see from the picture of the stitch detail. It still needs to be washed out and pressed gently for some of the rogue stitches to work themselves into a sensible shape. Shhh... it's a present.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You made the dimple-stitch shawl!and it looks beautiful, with the stitch detail exactly as shown in the book. I tried it - over and over - and always ended up with a geometrically increasing, out-of-control number of stitches. Even though the book says you can use straight needles, there is no way you could stuff all the double-wrapped, first pattern row onto even the longest straight needles, so you are right about the circulars, but is there some other trick to getting this shawl to come out right? It is so pretty, and I would love to make it out of a soft, pale-yellow wool I have. I found this nice blog searching for pattern errors, but now I see, it is just me. What could I be doing wrongly? Thanks!

Divinity said...

Hi Anonymous, thanks for commenting! I don't get many visitors here. I'm sure it's not just you. It's a complicated stitch to learn. I was lucky to have an expert pal of mine on hand to work with when I was stuck. It's been a while since I did the shawl and I've since lent the book away (and given the shawl away) but I do remember getting into a rhythm of giving the dropped stitches a tug each time I'd dropped a four-set before doing the stitch. If you could let me know where exactly you would start noticing errors, I could give it a think. Hope you visit again!

Anonymous said...

What a beautiful stich, your shawl looks awesome! I am thing about doing a scarf.