i.d.w.i.w

That's a phrase I hear from my sister a lot. She doesn't abbreviate that, but I didn't want to put the whole thing up there. It's "I do what I want." That's what I did with these shawls. The Loopy Ewe set up the challenge to knit a shawl using two colors. I've never knit a shawl in more than one color before last month. Now, I'm knitting them all the time. ;-)

These are tentatively called s.a.w. shawls. That stands for stripe at will. I had a basic idea for a triangular shawl, but I didn't want the stripes all over or in a regular pattern. This first shawl was knit with madelinetosh tosh sock in two colors from past Loopy Ewe sock clubs. They work well together, but the single green stripes got lost in the brown. This shawl had a mixture of single contrasting stripes and the larger blocks of contrasting color.

The next shawl, I wanted a lot more contrast. I used Wollmeise 100% in Himbeere and Blue Curacao. Since there is so much contrast, I decided to stick with the single contrasting stripes. I didn't want the shawl to read as only stripes, so I spaced out the stripes a lot more. This shawl turned out huge and I still had leftovers.

And because I worked on these while on a road trip and a camping trip, I had to take along more yarn "just in case." It turns out that I did have time to finish another shawl while on the trip.This shawl was knit with some interesting yarns. The orange is from Gaia's Colours and is 100% soy. I like the look of this yarn, but it does have an odd smell. The brownish yarn is also from Gaia's Colours and is a merino/bamboo sock blend. There was much less yardage in the orange yarn than any of the others. When it was getting close to running out, I worked the stripes across the whole bottom of the shawl and then finished it off with just the brown yarn.

I really like the shape of these shawls. I do plan on writing out the pattern to these. I think it might end more like a formula with instructions on how to do the different types of stripes and how to go about changing colors. These are fun and I wonder what they would look like if I added some lace into it? Hmmmm. I might have to start another one.