I picked up this really neat little “shawl in a cake” by Lion Brand Yarn in the color Namaste Neutrals (#303). It was a bit of an impulse buy, but it was on sale and I couldn’t resist. The glittery bits grabbed my attention and I had to try it out.
There were a couple different patterns for one skein of this great little yarn, but I opted to go with http://www.lionbrand.com/tassel-shawl-l80188.html
It worked up pretty quickly and was a super easy pattern, but I did have a few little issues that I ran across.
1. Repeat Rows
The pattern redirects you to repeat rows.This in of itself isn’t so bad if it is for a really big block of rows or if it happens once in the pattern, but on the first half of the shawl the redirection confused me a little since a few redirects had redirects in them.
Had I done the whole piece in one sitting (which is do-able, I just didn’t get to do that this time), maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, but I broke it into three sessions and was so confused I ended up frogging a bit.
What I *did* do to simplify matters, though, was I went in and filled in the actual rows rather than the repeats. You can print out the text version I altered here. As noted above this is NOT my pattern. This belongs to Lionbrand. I only did a text version with the rows to help myself and wanted to share with you guys.
2. Not Mirrored Correctly
When I got to the second half of the shawl, wherein I would decrease one stitch each row, I hit another snag.
The second half didn’t seem to mirror the first half accurately. Now, I looked at the pattern a few times and I keep seeing the mistake, so I am not sure if it is just me, but all I know is I ended up frogging the ENTIRE second half of the shawl when I got to the end the first time because the decreases just didn’t line up.
I altered the printed out copy that I have shared here so that it skips the first two rows on the second half to force it to mirror the first half after that center “middle” row.
After that it worked out for me.
3. Smaller than Expected
In the end, I am pleased with it and think it is super cute, but I had hoped it would have been wider. The images I saw made it look like it would have been a little bigger. I did have a whole bunch of yarn left over too.
If I were to do this shawl again, I would either do a decorative border around it or maybe add a few more rows to both sides – though not too much. It is “shawl in a cake” after all…. though maybe “scarf in a cake” might have been more accurate.
I did see they have more patterns out there that use a few of the cakes to make a beefier shawl though. The yarn was really nice to work with, I thought, though since it is a little fuzzy, frogging it required a gentle touch!
Anyways, hope you get a chance to try this! I imagine it would be nice with any weight yarn that requires a J hook. The original skein (in the cake) was 5.3 ounces and 481 yards (though I didn’t use all of it for the project).
Now what to do with the rest of the yarn…. small, fingerless gloves? a headband? a small pouch to keep things?
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