All About the Surf Shawl Pattern

I’d had a rough image of this shawl floating around in my mind for a number of months before I began working on this project. I wanted to knit myself another asymmetrical shawl, as I find these really easy to wear. I like to wrap the thinner end around my neck first, leaving a small end over my shoulder, then I bring the wider portion of the shawl around the front of my neck, so this is the main part which is visible. I can then tie the two ends together to keep them secure, or just tuck them under the edge of the shawl. I wanted the shawl to have a textured stitch pattern and use a simple gradient of colours. After I finished working on the Trails Cowl pattern I really wanted to work on a shawl, so it was a great opportunity to begin this project.

I knitted quite a few swatches to help me make decisions about this design. I knew I wanted to use a textured stitch pattern, but didn’t have a particular choice in mind, so I knit swatches to try out a lot of different ideas and help me choose what to use in the final design. I also needed to knit swatches to decide which edge to use, what kind of increases, plus I had to figure out how to create the exact shawl shape I had in mind. Since I wanted to create a smooth fade between the three colours used in the shawl, I additionally needed to knit some swatches to experiment with striping the colours together to create a smooth fade. Once I’d knitted all of these swatches and made plenty of notes, I had all of the information I needed to begin working on the pattern.

I wrote as much of the pattern as I could before I began knitting my shawl, I find this makes it easy for me to spot any mistakes as I’m knitting a project and make any corrections before continuing to knit. For this pattern I found I only needed to make some slight adjustments to the lengths of the sections during the project, this is why I find knitting so many swatches at the beginning of the design process works out well, as I could largely just work on knitting the shawl without needing to stop often to make updates to the pattern.

I’d had the three skeins of yarn I used for this design in my stash for a while, they’re all Spectrum Fibre’s twisted sock yarn in the colours ‘Blue Planet’, ‘Sea Spray’ and ‘Peacock’. I’d purchased them all at different times and hadn’t originally intended to use them together, but when experimenting with grouping yarns together for a previous project I realised these colours create a really nice fade. I decided I wanted to use these colours for a shawl, but didn’t have a particular project in mind at the time. When I began thinking about this shawl idea I realised I finally had the perfect design idea for the yarn.

I had a really enjoyable time knitting this shawl, the stitch pattern uses knit stitches and slipped stitches making it very easy to knit and I found it quite relaxing to work on. I was actually a bit sad when I finished knitting this shawl, because I missed having it on my needles. I won’t be surprised if I end up picking up some more yarn to knit myself another Surf Shawl in different colours in the near future.

Click the link below to check out the full details of the pattern.