FO Friday: Softly Spoken

I finished up the Softly Spoken shawl this week and it blocked out beautifully! The pattern is by Janina Callio of Woolenberry. I really enjoy knitting her patterns as they tend to be fairly straightforward knits with a nice combination of pretty but not overly complex details. I had been looking for some patterns to utilize the vast quantities of miniskeins I have in stash and this one fit the bill nicely.

It is a rectangular stole, or a very generous scarf, knit one short end to the other. I used 5 tonal-dyed 20-g minis from the Rebel Woolworks summer advent box my DH got me as a birthday gift this year, plus the coordinating multicolored full skein. I only used about 60 g of the 100-g full skein. The yarn base (Sahalie Sock) is a bit heavier than the original used in the pattern so I was only able to knit 10 and not 11 repeats, as called for, in each of the solid color bands. I could have gotten a half repeat out of the miniskeins, but I opted to just omit a repeat and I think the length turned out fine. I used a total of 672 yards for the finished shawl.

The other change I made was that the pattern called for a temporary cast-on, where you go back at the end once you’ve bound off the opposite end and undo the cast-on, pick those stitches up, and then bind them off using a picot bind-off so the ends match. I just opted to use a picot cast-on, and then worked across the stole, and used a picot bind-off for the opposite end. They match fine (I used the same cadence to create the picots so they would) and I much prefer that way of working than fussing around with unzipping the cast-on and then immediately casting off.

The pattern originally was written for more of a true fade gradient, with off-white for the two ends and then a light pink to dark rose color shift through the minis. I enjoyed this pattern enough I may give that look a try at some point, but I do love this one with with it’s stronger fall colors just in time for some cooler weather here in the northern hemisphere.