I Have A Finished Object! . . . Uh, . . . No, I Don’t . . .

I finished “The Assassin’s Daughter” shawl, using 3 skeins, but it was too small for the way I like to wear my shawls.**  But, I have 7 skeins total of that yarn, so I frogged out the top border, and I’m adding another two skeins (5 skeins total) and I’ll see how that goes.  If that’s still not big enough, I’ll go the whole 7.  Since I’m increasing two stitches every other row, and I’m adding to the top, the number of rows I can get out of each skein diminishes the more stitches I have on the needle.

I’ve been taking a leaf from the lovely Miss Bernadette Banner‘s book and attempting to suss out how a garment is made just by looking at a picture of somebody wearing it.  In this case, it’s that interesting olive green shawl being worn by Kathy Hipperson in the below video as she sits chatting with Ms. Banner in the pub.

Regular subscribers to Ms. Banner’s vlog might recognize Ms. Hipperson as the actress who interprets “Mrs. Crocombe” in the English Heritage “How To Cook the Victorian Way” videos.

In some of the comments, people were wanting to know about the olive green “sweater” she was wearing and how to get a pattern for it.  It’s actually not a sweater.  It’s a shawl with the ends crossed over her left shoulder.  My informed guess is that it is rectangular in shape, about 24 inches wide and at least 60 inches long. It’s done in garter stitch with a braided cable (3 sts x 3 sts x 3 sts) down the length, probably off center, i.e., closer to one edge than to the center.

It’s made from bulky weight yarn and worked on very big needles (possibly 9.0-10 mm/US13-15).  It would be pretty easy to copy once you had your stitch gauge. Knit a 5 inch by 5 inch swatch in your chosen yarn, with your chosen needles, measure the number of stitches to the inch, x 24 – 30 inches to get the cast on. Then allocate 9 or 12 stitches for your cable with a purl-stitch gutter on either side to give the cable a little more definition.  Put markers on either side of your cable. The cable stitches are worked per standard braided cable with 5 rows between crosses. The rest is garter stitch, and how hard is garter stitch? she asks rhetorically. . .

Of course, now I have to see if I’ve got enough yarn to make one for myself. . . . Sigh.  But it would be a fairly straightforward project, and bulky yarn in garter stitch on bulky needles goes quickly.

** There are two schools of thought about shawls.  Some people like to wear their shawls like a scarf or cowl, up around their neck.  Others like to wear their shawl around their shoulders like a cape.  Obviously, you wouldn’t want such a big shawl if you were wearing it around your neck.  On the other hand, a larger shawl would fit around your shoulders better .  Since I belong to the latter school, I’m going for a bigger shawl.