A knitting story with a cozy ending.

I really enjoy knitting triangular shawls. They are soothing to make because they are knit flat, and you don’t need to swatch. Triangular shawls are easy to wear without being overwhelming. You can wear them the traditional way around your shoulders, scrunch them up like a scarf, turn the point around to the front, and everything in between. They aren’t awkward to drape like asymmetrical shawls are.

I hadn’t knitted a triangular shawl in a couple of years, and when I found a kit for A Girl’s Best Friend at the Salida Fiber Festival, I knew it was time. It’s a beautiful pattern with a lot of texture, and even though I normally hate bobbles, there weren’t a lot of them. The kit was from Six and Seven Fiber, a tiny dye company here in Colorado, and contained soft colors that complement each other beautifully. Six and Seven creates lovely themed collections based on works of art or literature, and I’d been tempted by their yarn before. So I brought home my kit, caked up the yarn, and got started.

The lacy textured sections of this shawl were fun to knit. When I finished the fourth of five repeats in Pattern Band 2, I was really beginning to admire my own work. Which is fine, right? That’s what keeps us going, especially on large projects.

Unfortunately, I soon realized I was almost out of yarn. I went back and compared the kit with the pattern, only to discover that the kit was 108 yards short of the main color, 38 yards short on contrasting color 1, and 17 yards short of contrasting color 2. Grrr. If I made kits, I’d include as many yards as the pattern calls for, PLUS maybe 10% extra to take care of loose knitters, yarn knots, mistakes, swatches, etc. Super frustrating.

My first thought was that maybe I should stop buying kits, as tempting as they are, but in this case I had to figure out a solution. I thought about trying to sub in similar colors from my stash, but while this might be okay for a single colorway, it wouldn’t work for all three. I also thought about shortening the pattern, stopping repeats when I run out of yarn. But I like big shawls (and I cannot lie), and fundamentally the kit should have contained enough yarn to complete the pattern as written.

I contacted Six and Seven to see if I could get enough yarn to finish the pattern, and hoped the dye batches would match. The dyer replied with an apology, and promptly sent me an entire second kit at no charge, which did indeed match. Yay for great customer service! I had plenty to complete the shawl, and maybe enough left over to make some soft matching mitts.

I ended up omitting the first two rows of the dreaded bobbles, but left in the third because I thought they would look like little rosebuds, and provide some extra texture to the beginning of the border. That one row took me several hours. All the flipping back and forth was awkward, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. I bound off after the third repeat of the border section, to balance out the top sections that have just a tiny bit of Gingersnap. I used the elastic bind off from the Some Me Time Shawl, and it was perfect. The bobbles do admittedly look pretty.

Despite the initial setback, this lovely shawl blocked out beautifully and I am super pleased with the result. She may indeed be my new best friend.