The FML Shawl

The Find My Light Shawl (FML)

I’ve been noodling around with this idea for a shawl for some time now. I really love super long, wrappable shawls that are more of a scarf. The ones that you can wrap twice around your neck, or even fold in half and pull a loop through as you can do with thinner chiffon scarves.

However achieving such a long shawl can be tricky when you only have one skein of sockweight yarn to play with.

So I decided to try creating a long, wedge-shaped shawl with a picot edge which is knit as you go, and I was absolutely thrilled with how it turned out. I was less than thrilled when I came to photograph it though as it’s length makes it almost impossible to capture in a single image.

And the name? If you've followed me for a while you'll know that I love a shawl with a cheeky acronym. There's the FFFS (Fuss Free Festival Shawl) and the WTF (Worth the Fuss Shawl). So it was only a matter of time before I added the FML to my library.

The Find My Light Shawl was knit during a period of real reflection and change for me. I've made no secret of the fact that the menopause transition has been difficult for me and part of that has been accepting that my body is different to how it was before. Not worse, just different. While I was knitting on this I was reflecting on the fact after a period of difficulty I feel as though I am enjoying my daily activities more and finding joy in small things again - finding my light as it were.

And so it seemed a good name for the shawl - and the slightly cheeky acronym was of course an added bonus. Although given my difficulties in photographing it, I did consider naming it the TTP (terrible to photograph).

My favourite shawl design

The PPS - Pattern Please Shawl

Being a designer, releasing patterns out into the world is a little bit like being a parent.

At some point, after a lot of time and effort you have to release your little darlings out into the world, ready to take on whatever life throws at them and knowing that to some extent, they’ll have to fend for themselves.

And, much like children I don’t think I’m supposed to have a favourite one.

With my kids, obviously I love them both equally and could never choose between them. But with my patterns, I think I’m probably allowed to have a favourite. And if I had to pick a favourite shawl of mine it would have to be this one.

The PPS (Pattern Please Shawl) ticks all my boxes for a fun, wearable design that’s fun to knit.

There’s the name to start with - born of facebook group frustrations when ‘pattern?’ or ‘pattern please?’ crops up with monotonous regularity.

But there’s also the sheer versatility of the kite-shaped design. It starts off with a small number of stitches and increases to give a dramatic chevron effect (if you use stripes). It allows you to play with colour, with mini skeins, with big skeins - really - the world is your knitting oyster.

This version uses two full skeins of sockweight yarn and it’s probably the one I wear most often. The smaller version uses 1 x 100g skein of sock yarn along with a set of mini skeins to give a smaller, slightly skinner shawl but the kite shape ensures that it still has good wrappability. An important characteristic in any shawl.

What makes a good shawl design for you? Is it size, shape, stash-using-ability?

Do let me know in the comments.

Join the Sassy Stripe KAL

It’s no secret that I love a good striped shawl, especially one knit in lovely relaxing garter stitch. There are just so many things to love about stripes, not least the opportunity to play with colour and to stashbust into the bargain.

As it’s been far too long since I had a good, chilled out knitalong I thought now would be the perfect time for a shawl KAL, specifically a stripy shawl KAL.

We will start on 1st June and it will be hosted both in the Everyday Knitter Facebook group and also on Instagram with the hashtag #SassyStripeKAL.

As a little thank you for taking part I’m offering a 25% discount on selected shawls from my website, all of which were either knitted with stripes, or lend themselves well to some stripe love. No code is needed for this, just use the button below to shop the sale shawls and then look out for the KAL posts on Facebook and Instagram.

As for me - I’m thinking I’m going to reknit my I Heart Stripes shawl which is in dire need of some new pattern photos. I just need to ferret through my stash first and dig out the perfect yarn.

How about you, can I tempt you?

How much yarn do you need for a Mitered Square

If you have ever contemplated the size of your leftover yarn bag and thought of making a mitered square blanket, then this is a post to bookmark and come back to for reference.

Ever obsessed with using up my leftover yarn - which mysteriously keeps replenishing itself when my back is turned, I took it upon myself to do a little investigation and work our how much yarn I needed for mitered squares of varying sizes in both DK and sock weight yarn.

The results I present below for your knitting pleasure because as we all know, the only thing more frustrating than running out of yarn with just a few rows to go, is ending up with lots of slightly smaller balls of yarn (that are too small for the square size you’ve chosen).

I have to add the caveat here that YMMV - your mileage may vary.

I weighed these squares on my digital scales which only go down to 1g increments so there may be some rounding up/down. Also your gauge and specific yarn weights might give different results, but hopefully the amounts below will serve as a guide.

Yarn amounts for sock weight yarn:

Using a 3mm needle and at a gauge of 28sts per 4”. In the list below 10x10 is shorthand for 10 sts by 10 sts.

10x10 1.5" less than 1g
15x15 2" 2g
20x20 3" 4g
25x25 3.75"6g
30x30 4.25" 8g
35x35 5.25" 11g

Yarn amounts for DK weight yarn:

Using a 4mm needle and at a gauge of 21sts per 4”

10x10 2" 2g
15x15 3" 4g
20x20 3.75" 8g
25x25 4.5" 14g
30x30 5.5" 18g

You can find all of this information along with my in-depth tutorial for creating your very own Mitered Square Blanket in my e-book, which is for sale at the link below.

If you’d like to read more about Mitered Square Blankets and their construction - I have a blog post and tutorial here that might help.

The Comfort Blanket KAL is back for 2023

I'm delighted to be able to announce that the Comfort Blanket KAL is back for 2023. It ran very successfully in 2020 and 2021 but last year I missed it due to the death of my Dad.

The year doesn't seem complete without my most popular KAL event though so I figured it was a good time to dust it off and relaunch it for another year.

Tell me more...

The Comfort Blanket KAL 2023 is a 4 week KAL which walks you through every step of planning and getting started on your mitered square blanket journey. I say journey because these blankets - typically knit from leftover yarn are generally considered to be long term projects. No one is expecting you to knit a blanket in 4 weeks - please don't worry.

Instead the KAL is intended as a springboard to get you started, with ideas and inspiration as well as practical tips for planning and construction.

The KAL will start on May 1st and each Monday for 4 weeks you'll get an email with that week's topic. The information will also be available within a dedicated Facebook group where you will be able to hang out with fellow Comfort Blanket KAL'ers and chat about your various projects.

And at the end of the KAL you’ll get an ebook containing all the information from the 4 weeks, along with a few other tips and tricks.

Previous year’s participants

If you took part in the previous KALs sit tight, as the joining instructions to the Facebook group and your automatic invitation will be heading your way soon. 

We all know that these blankets are a labour of love and you are welcome to come and join us again to add some more mitered squares to your work-in-progress. Or if you are a finishing superstar and you want to join in with another - because one mitered square blanket is never enough - it would be lovely to have you on board too.

Done is better than perfect

I've been doing a lot of thinking about perfectionism this week - partly as a continuation of last week's Tuesday Tip where I talked about the one piece of advice I'd give to all knitters.

Handknits are meant to have imperfections in them - it shows they were made by a human being not a machine.

That being said, it reminded me of when I shared a photo of my mitered square blanket - back in the day when I thought it was finished - and someone helpfully popped up to point out the square where the line runs in the opposite direction.

Luckily I'd seen it already, and decided that I could very easily live with it. But if I hadn't, or I was of a more fragile disposition I'd have been really upset.

But people of course love to point out others mistakes, it's a real human trait and well recognised psychologically.

In fact brands/companies will sometimes include an intentional error in their social media posts - as the slew of people pointing out the typo or the flaw will boost engagement.

Essex Is United - is a community FB page which started during the pandemic and they are past masters at this. They usually include a tiny error - in a jokey way - and then stand back and watch their comments section explode as people fall over themselves to point it out. It doesn't even matter that 120 people before them have done so, they still want to add their comment.

Why do humans do this? I've no idea

But in knitting terms, it's probably best that if you see a mistake in someone else's work that they are proudly sharing online - that you pretend you didn't