Cobblestone Shawlette

May 16, 2016 by Silvernfire 8 Comments

For a designer whom I’d never heard of before a few months ago, I’m becoming quite fond of Janina Kallio’s patterns. She does a lot with combining solid knitting and mesh, and this appeals to me. So after finishing the Ardent Shawlette, I went straight into another pattern of hers: Cobblestone.

I’d been saving this skein of Rustic Fingering until I found the right pattern, and I decided this was it. (I mean, when a yarn is this lovely shade of pink, you can’t knit just anything with it.) I had more yarn than the pattern called for, but this is a design that lets you add as many pattern repeats as you like as long as the numbers come out right. I added three more. I was weighing the yarn after each repeat, trying to figure out how much the four-row repeat was consuming—plus the repeats were gradually growing, and thus using slightly more yarn…yeah, it was a bit tense at times, and I did a lot more ripping out than I’d counted on. And at the end, I had barely enough yarn to bind off, and I didn’t bind off as stretchily as would’ve been best. But by that point, I was determined to just see it done.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed with this design. Purely a matter of preference on my part; it’s not like the pattern was badly written or anything like that. I simply hadn’t realized until blocking that the garter stitch sections have a much shorter row gauge than the mesh section. Somehow that didn’t occur to me while I was planning the project and I never noticed while I was knitting it (I blame the fact that it was all scrunched up on the needles). But once it was off, flat, and wet, it became obvious that I was going to have to stretch the heck out of the garter stitch sections to keep them from pulling the mesh out of shape, and I don’t like the look of stretched garter stitch. Hmph. (Yes, I’d seen the photos on Ravelry and some of them were close enough to see the garter stitch. I didn’t make the connection. Grr.)

But enough complaining. 🙂 It’s done, it’s a lovely shade of pink, and it looks nice when worn. Which is really all that matters.

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Cobblestone Shawlette
Pattern: Cobblestone
Yarn: Neighborhood Fiber Co. Rustic Fingering
Color: Victorian Village
Needles: 6 (4.0 mm)

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