“Ordo” – a new brain bending shawl pattern
Order and chaos.
Order created from chaos.
Chaos facilitating order.
One begins – the other follows.
The two swirling around each other.
Two strands of yarn,
twisting around each other,
creating a whole new color.
Intertwining paths,
built with negative space,
splitting, intersecting, looping back around.
‘Ordo’ is Latin for “order, rank, or class.”
Order begets chaos. Chaos begets order.
Add a stitch. Create a hole. Make some lace.
The Important Pattern Details:
Yarn: 1,750 yards of lace weight yarn; 2 skeins of Toil & Trouble’s “Filament (Merino Silk Lace)” colorways: ‘Smoke Signals’ & ‘Apollo’
Two strands of lace weight yarn (one strand of each colorway) are held together throughout the shawl. This gives you a marled fabric, and at the same time, lets you use a not so itty bitty needle.
Needles: US 5s (3.75mm) 40″ circular needles; larger needles for binding off
Notions: stitch markers (8); tapestry/yarn needle
Gauge: 20 stitches & 34 rounds = 4 inches (10 cm) with smaller needle, in washed and blocked stockinette stitch
Dimensions: 40 inches (101.5 cm) blocked diameter
Skills Used: reading charts; casting on; knitting; k2tog, ssk, yo, k3tog, k3togtbl; binding off; weaving in ends; blocking lace
Please note that this lace stitch pattern is charted only.
Queue and purchase the pattern here on Ravelry.
Here’s the Ravelry link.
Rosmerta – a new shawl pattern!
I sort of sneaked a new shawl pattern up onto Ravelry Friday morning.
It’s a crescent shaped shawl with a mesh lattice work pattern, and knit with one skein of Julie Asselin’s “Merletto,” which is 800 yards of a beautifully plump lace weight yarn.
Hand dyed yarn and complex stitch patterns usually fight with each other, and can play epic games of tug-and-war if you let them. What do you look at first? The yarn or the stitch work?
With this pattern I’m calling a cease fire.
The strong diamond & mesh pattern creates lace work that shines, while smooth expanses of stockinette allow the gorgeous yarn & colors to take center stage.
Here’s the pattern on Ravelry.
I started this pattern way back in August, and am so excited to have the pattern out to you.
The name “Rosmerta” was initially inspired by the last name of everyone’s favorite Hogsmeade pub proprietress. After a little digging it also turns out to be the name of the Gaulish goddess of abundance & fertility.
And (maybe most importantly) it fills “R” in my (slightly strange) quest to name shawls after every letter of the alphabet.
This is also my 40th(!) pattern on Ravelry. When did that happen?!?!
You can see them all here.
All the important pattern details.
Materials: 800 yards (740 meters), lace weight
Sample Shown in: Julie Asselin, “Merletto”
1 skein, 800 yards (740 meters)/skein, colorway ‘Anémone’
75% merino wool, 15% cashmere, 10% silk
Needles: US size 3 (3.25 mm) 40 inch circular needle
use needles needed to obtain gauge
Notions:
stitch markers (8)
extra stitch markers for internal reps (36)
it helps if these two sets of stitch markers are different
tapestry or yarn needle
Gauge: 26 sts and 40 rows = 4 in (10 cm) in washed and blocked St st
Blocked Dimensions: 18 inches (45.5 cm) down center back, blocked
exact dimensions may vary depending on how aggressively the piece is blocked
Note: This pattern only includes charts for the stitch repeats.
The pattern is available on Ravelry, now.
Lets Talk Yarn…
This is an excerpt from Shawls to Play With, a shawl collection that is more than the individual patterns, it’s about bringing more freedom to your knitting.
LETS TALK YARN
You’re at a yarn shop, wandering around looking at an amazing array of colors and fibers. A skein catches your eye, you pick it off the shelf, and fall in love. Madly, madly in love. Repeat.
Before you know it, your basket is full, you’ve checked out, and are on your way home with your haul, including a skein or two of lace weight that you didn’t mean to pick up, but that were too pretty to resist. Those skeins hang around your stash, until you finally do a yarn cleanse and pass them along to a lace knitting friend.
Sound familiar? A substantial portion of my stash is lace weight yarn passed along from friends who realized they would never, ever, knit with it. I’m happy to take beautiful yarn off your hands. But I’d be even happier spreading the lace weight love.
I get it. tiny yarn + tiny needles + big shawl + crazy lace = eep!
However, lace shawls are divine. They’re light, airy, drapey, ethereal, and well worth the headache.
But I concede, sometimes they’re a headache.
One of the most straight forward ways to reduce some of the headache of lace is to scale the project up. Many scale their lace projects up by using sock or fingering weight yarns. This does make the project less intimidating, however, most easily accessible thick yarns (especially sock yarns), are designed for durability instead of for drape. This makes them great for sturdy socks, but not so great for drapey shawls. When you use sock yarns for lace shawls, you’re exchanging the drape of lace yarns for the durability of sock yarns.
There’s nothing wrong with fingering weight yarns for lace shawls. It’s been done many times with great success. However, you will never get an ethereal shawl out of sock yarn.
Sock yarn just isn’t ethereal.
Instead I would suggest holding multiple strands of lace weight yarn together.
By holding multiple strands of lace weight together, you keep the drapey properties of lace yarn, while simultaneously being able to go up needle sizes. Of course not all of the properties of lace weight yarn scale up one hundred percent, but many of them do.
The shawls in this collection are perfect for…
…that special skein you’ve been hoarding
We all have very special skeins of yarn that we have no idea what to do with.
Maybe it comes with special memories.
Maybe it’s too variegated.
Maybe it’s not quite your color but is still breathtaking.
These shawls are for the skein that won’t play second fiddle to an intricate lace pattern.
No complex stitch patterns to steal the show, just an expanse of stockinette and strategically placed increases, so these patterns let the yarn shine.
…combining colors or mixing fibers & textures
Holding multiple strands together lets you easily mix colors. Or fibers.
And because the yarn is the star of these patterns there’s no lacework to obscure.
It means you can concentrate on your colors and textures and fibers.
Mix colors, or textures, or both.
The possibilities and combinations are limitless.
This was an excerpt from Shawls to Play With.
