My latest pattern release; Lindy Pop, is a fun (and sort of wild!) fringed shawl. It uses 8 colors of sport or fingering weight yarn, a garter stitch bias center and charted lace and cable vertical edges.
This pattern came to be when Lux Adorna sent me a gigantic set of their Cashmere Sport, called a lofty lux braid. The colors were amazing... but not anything I would ever choose on my own. Lime Green? Yes, probably the color of my soul, Deep Plum? Okay, I do like that one too, but all those cooler colors? sage green? denim blue? FOREST GREEN! (Yikes!!) not colors I usually like AT ALL.
But somehow this crazy mix started to grow on me, admittedly it sat for a while, like maybe even 2 weeks and I just let the pattern percolate in my mind. I knew I loved the color contrast and wanted to play it up a bit, and I needed some of those color combinations to play nicely with each other. I ended up rearranging the colors into a slightly different order and what do you know? inspiration! Stripes, stripes and more stripes, with a funky twisted stitches lace section> perfect.
Now for the ends issue, there were going to be So. Many. Ends. seriously, I envisioned this striped wrap where the shaping jostled the lines of the stripes up and down and all over, but the ends were going to be... epic. Now I do know some people who like weaving in ends, and I do from time to time. But this was going to be end weaving level 60 because each pattern repeat changes color 7 times, which means 14 ends per repeat, which for 11 repeats is 154 ends and that does not even include the cast on and bind off ends. Clearly there needed to be another solution>> FRINGE!
After working the entire wrap the last 10 stitches of the bind of are left live, and then totally unravelled, even the cast on. Then you knot those loops into fringe and voila! A swingy amazing wrap with very little weaving in.
The pattern is pretty simple, with the center section being garter stitch and the only real thing to pay attention to are the color changes. But there is one tricky technique in the lace pattern (which is written and charted) it has patterning on both side of the work and also requires a twisted k2tog.
I put together a little tutorial for you with step by step photos to help with this technique since it is a little different. So grab your copy of the Lindy Pop pattern and check out the twisted k2tog tutorial below!
How To: Twisted K2tog
Twisted k2togs are necessary to create the right leaning knit 2 together decrease while still having the front knit stitch twisted. This involves some shifting around of stitches but is still simply and easy to work.
Begin by bringing your right needle tip around the back of the work, you will be slipping the next stitch from back to front through the back loop.
Slip the stitch onto the right tip.
Now repeat the step for the next stitch on the left tip, insert right tip from back to front into back leg.
And slip onto right needle tip.
Now move both stitches back to the left needle tip without any furthur twists; so make sure you are slipping tip to tip.
And knit 2 together through the front loops.
I I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If you have any questions please leave me a comment and I will get back to you - Happy Knitting! Meghan
Helen Rodriguez
That is so cool. I can’t wait to try it. Thank you