Since my last post about the Wild Swan Shawl, I’ve made a LOT of progress.
I’m about halfway done with it! (It definitely took some undoing and redoing of rows)
Here are some pictures of the progress along the way:
It’s definitely satisfying to see those feather🪶 / leaf🍃 patterns appear after you get past those rows!
The color gradient switching to dark blue hasn’t kicked in yet, but soon!
Some Interesting Stitches
Lace patterns always have some interesting stitch combinations to produce those holey patterns. At the beginning of the PDF for this pattern, there’s a fantastic key explaining some of the stitch notations. Luckily they weren’t too crazy, as they were just extensions of common stitches, but they did take some learning.
Increases and Decreases
Most of these were increases and decreases intended to produce different slants or other visual effects. Lately I’ve been paying more attention to why certain stitches are chosen in a pattern, and specifically I notice the left- vs. right-slanting incs/decs more, now that I’m paying attention.
Here are (most of) the increases/decreases appearing in the pattern:
| Notation | Explanation | Counting Effect | Visual Effect |
| yo | Yarn-over leading into next stitch | Increase 1 st | Add a new st, with a hole appearing under it |
| co | Backwards loop cast-on | Increase 1 st | Similar to yo, but easier to add many new sts consecutively |
| kyok | k, yo, k into next st | Increase 2 sts | Increases by 2 sts in a fan-like triangle radiating from previous st. Also has a hole appearing in the middle of the fan: \o/ |
| k2tog | Knit 2 sts together | Decrease 1 st | Right-leaning decrease |
| skp(sso) | Slip 1 knitwise, knit, pass slipped st over knit st | Decrease 1 st | Left-leaning decrease |
| ssk (not used in pattern) | Slip 2 knitwise (one at a time), then use left needle to knit 2 slipped sts together | Decrease 1 st | Same as skp(sso), but easier for some people |
| k3tog | Knit 3 sts together | Decrease 2 sts | Very right-leaning decrease |
| sssk | Slip 3 knitwise (one at a time), then use left needle to knit 3 slipped sts together | Decrease 2 sts | Very left-leaning decrease |
| sk2p | Slip 1 knitwise, k2tog, pass slipped st over | Decrease 2 sts | Double central decrease /|\ |
| dcd (?) | Slip 2 knitwise, k1, pass 2 slipped sts over | Decrease 2 sts | Double central decrease /|\ |
The specific decreases matter a lot to make the feather patterns turn out correctly. For example, the outer edges of the feathers have to “bend” inwards, like so: /~~~\. After you do a bit of the pattern, you get a hang for when certain sts are meant to be used. Since I was already familiar with the basic k2tog and ssk decreases, it wasn’t too difficult to pick up the 3-to-1 decreases, which just involve more sts being slipped and knit together.
Backwards Loop Cast-On
Although I’d done this st before, I did have to look it up again online to get the hang of it 🤷
I found the picture guide on the Knit Picks website to be super useful here.
Once you figure out the motion to loop the yarn with the thumb and create a new stitch, it goes really quickly.
ONE WARNING:
When you work one of these stitches while passing on the next row, be really sure that you’re counting stitches correctly, because unworking one of these is really difficult. The stitch is usually tight to the needle, so it’s hard to wedge the needle into it to undo it if you make a mistake. Trust me, I had to undo a couple of rows after counting wrong, and it cost me a couple extra days of effort to fix 😭
Feather Pattern Pictures
Here are a few more pictures showing some of the patterns more closely:
Just one more half left to complete… Wish me luck!
Mihir the Cable Guy 