Fresh Air Shawl
Alternating between a section of garter stitch and a textured eyelet section, the Fresh Air Shawl is a relaxing project and perfect canvas for experimenting with marling. Either use a single colour of sport weight yarn, or marl two strands of fingering weight yarn together and play with colour.
Finished Measurements
Wingspan: 55” / 140 cm
Centre point depth: 30” / 76 cm
The size can be easily adjusted by knitting additional sections or binding off early. Each garter stitch section adds approximately 10” / 25 cm to the wingspan of the shawl and each textured eyelet section adds approximately 5” / 13 cm to the wingspan of the shawl.
Both shawls are shown on Lucinda, who is 5'3" / 160cm tall.
Yarn
This pattern can be knit with either two strands of fingering weight yarn marled together, or a single strand of sport weight yarn.
Sport weight yarn (360 grams / 1030 yards / 942 metres)
or
Fingering weight yarn (443 grams / 2060 yards / 1884 metres)
This project is a great opportunity to experiment with marling colours.
Potential ideas include:
- Using a few larger skeins of yarn.
- Using a selection of mini skeins, such as from a yarn advent calendar or from mini skein sets.
- Using one colour throughout the project, marled with various other colours.
- Using leftover scraps of yarn you have from other projects, this can be especially useful for using up small amounts of yarn.
The pattern includes a Marling Guide section. This provides guidance on when to switch colours and approximately how much of each colour you'll need whilst using one of the options described above.
Suggested Yarn
Single colour sample: 4 skeins of Beehive Yarns Cilla, colour ‘Khakis’ (100% SW Bluefaced Leicester) - 100 grams / 286 yards / 262 metres per skein.
Marled sample: 24 mini skeins from the Beehive Yarns 2020 Advent Calendar, ‘Audrey’ base (75% SW Merino, 25% Nylon) - 20 grams / 93 yards / 85 metres per skein.
I didn’t have enough advent yarn left to knit a full sized shawl, but it’s easy to adjust the size of this project so I simply knitted until I was running out of yarn and then bound off.
Needles
4.5mm - 40 inch / 100 cm circular (use the needle size needed to achieve gauge).
Notions
- Row counter
- Tapestry needle
Gauge
20 sts & 40 rows in a 4 x 4 inch (10 x 10 cm) square worked in garter stitch, blocked.
Techniques
Learn More
Read my blog post for an in-depth look at the Fresh Air Shawl pattern.
