Vineyard MKAL Shawl Pattern

Description

The Vineyard MKAL shawl pattern is a mystery knitalong project, beginning September 4, 2024. One sixth of the pattern will be released every week until the entire pattern is published. Then, it will be available as a regular knitting pattern.

The Vineyard shawl is a colourful way to play with those beautiful kits of mini skeins. It uses 6 minis and one full skein of fingering-weight yarn to create a wearable, colourful, textural shawl.

If you love colour and hate sewing in ends, this is the pattern for you! I’ve built this pattern around my favourite (so far) techniques for using colours with:

• NO cutting of the balls of yarn
• NO sewing in ends (well, almost — there will be 2 ends to sew in: the first and last tails from the cast on and bind off steps)
• NO using more than one colour per row
• NO wondering what to do with all the yarns not in use on each row

Yarn:

• Size 1: 100g main colour, plus six 20g mini skeins (100g/387y/354m + 6 x 20g/97y/89m)
• Size 2: 115g main colour, plus six 25g mini skeins (115g/440y/402m + 6 x 25g/110y/101m) (This is the size of the kits from Kat’s Riverside Studio)
• Size 3: about 1.5 to 1.75 skeins main colour, plus 6 partial skeins from stash (172g/660y/603m + 6 x 38g/165y/152m)
• Size 4: 2 skeins of main colour, plus 2 sets of minis (230g/880y/802m + 6 x 50g/220y/202m)

Needles:

One circular needle, used for flat knitting: size 5 US / 3.75 mm needle tips, 32″ in length. (If you want to use a different length, I’d recommend sizing a bit shorter rather than longer, but anything will do in a pinch.) We’re knitting at a loose gauge, for a drapey fabric that will block larger.

Gauge:

My sample had a gauge of about 5.5 sts and 7 rows per inch before blocking, then it grew to about 4.5 sts and 4.5 rows per inch after aggressive wet blocking.

Size:

Four Sizes: 1-2-3-4
Width at widest point after blocking: 20-23-28-32” / 51-59-71-81 cm
Length after blocking: 128-148-186-216” / 325-376-472-549 cm

About the Pattern:

The pattern includes row-by-row instructions in a table checklist with stitch counts, a complete stand-alone charted version of the pattern, and a full glossary of terms & abbreviations. There are accompanying videos on my YouTube channel, aknitica.

Skills Needed:

This pattern is written for adventurous beginners, with full explanations of all stitches and techniques included. Experienced knitters can refer to the charts for more condensed (but still comprehensive) instructions.

The stitch patterns and structure used are suitable for every skill level.