From Light To Luxe: My DK Blended Shawl

I get asked all the time if the free Blended Shawl pattern can be done in a heavier weight yarn. The answer is yes!! Because it’s a sideways asymmetrical knitted shawl that starts at one corner with one stitch you knit until it reaches the size you like. So yarn weight doesn’t really matter. You will have to use a larger needle with a heavier yarn though to get a nicely draping fabric.

I recently experimented with a DK weight yarn and created the gorgeous new DK Blended Shawl shown below:

I originally designed the Blended Shawl to use up sock and fingering-weight yarn leftovers. I knit a lot of fingering/sock weight shawls and I end up with lots of little balls of leftover yarn from all of my shawl knitting. The Blended Shawl pattern uses up all those leftovers to create a beautiful light and airy blended masterpiece. My first Blended Shawl is below on the left. My next Blended Shawl was a bit bigger and used more colours. It’s shown below on the right.

The Pattern

The pattern is free and you can find it here on my website: Blended Shawl. It’s all garter stitch, there’s no decreasing, and you can use however much yarn you wish. You can use small amounts of leftovers or bigger skeins. Mini skein sets are perfect for this pattern as well. And as I said above, you can use any weight of yarn.

The blended sections of the Blended Shawl use a pattern of rows that alternate two colours to ‘blend’ them together. This pretty fade technique makes each colour blend seamlessly into the next. Using variegated yarns or yarns of similar colours makes the blend even more invisible.

My DK Blended Shawl

For my DK version of this shawl I chose four colours of Malabrigo Arroyo. It’s a DK weight yarn and it comes in beautiful rich luxurious colours. I already had two beautiful skeins in my yarn stash. I chose two more skeins that I thought would blend nicely with what I already had. My four colours are: Volcan, Glitter, Eternidad, and Purpuras. The beauty of this pattern is that you can use one skein, a few skeins, lots of skeins, or leftovers. I thought that using only four colours could be an interesting experiment.

I debated on whether to keep repeating these colours over and over again while blending them for a very blended look or using one colour at a time in longer stretches. In the end, I decided to do one colour at a time in long stretches and blend each transition according to the pattern instructions. I knew I’d end up with lots of leftover yarn from four full skeins so maybe one day I’ll use these leftovers to knit a version with lots of repeating colours.

Knitting My DK Blended Shawl

I started with Volcan, a brilliant variegated orange. I used a size US7 circular needle. You’ll notice that I didn’t go up much in needle size for this. The original Blended Shawl was done with fingering weight yarn and a size US6 needle. I blocked it quite hard in order to get a light airy shawl. I love a light airy fingering weight shawl. This time however, I wanted a denser fabric and DK weight yarn isn’t a whole lot heavier than fingering weight. So I only went up one needle size.

Each skein is approximately 100 grams. In order to have somewhat equal looking ‘stripe’ sections of each colour in a growing triangular shape, I decided to use approximately:

• 20 grams of colour 1 (Volcan); and I knit until 52 sts were on the needle,
• 30 grams of colour 2 (Glitter); I knit until 81 sts were on the needle,
• 40 grams of colour 3 (Eternidad); knit until 110 sts on the needle,
• 50 grams of colour 4 (Purpuras); knit until 139 sts on the needle,

for a total of 140 grams of yarn. The second, third, and fourth colours are 29 rows each.

I finished with 139 stitches on my needle and I used a regular bind-off done loosely so that the edge would stretch nicely during blocking. I ended up using only about 120 grams of yarn – 20 grams less than I predicted. So my weight calculations were very approximate. But I’m definitely happy with the proportions of each colour. (Just for reference, my first Blended Shawl used 100 grams of fingering weight yarn and second used 164 grams of fingering weight yarn).

Finishing The Shawl

It’s important to wash and block knitting projects. Washing and blocking evens out the stitches, makes the yarn bloom, and gives you a proper finished size. Shawl blocking can also help achieve the type of fabric you want in the end. As I mentioned earlier, I blocked my original fingering weight Blended Shawls quite hard. I wanted a light airy fabric. This time, with DK weight yarn I want a denser, luxurious fabric so I didn’t block as hard.

My finished shawl is soft, colourful, and rich and luxurious looking. The depth and richness of these four colours of Malabrigo Arroyo when they blend together give the illusion of a sophisticated stitch pattern. However, it’s all garter stitch and it’s easy to complete. Using only four colours worked beautifully because the colours I chose are already quite variegated.

Because I started with so much yarn I really could have made this shawl larger by knitting longer sections of each colour. However, the shawl size I ended up with is just right. I have enough yarn left to make two more same size shawls! But I think I’ll hang on to these leftovers and when I accumulate some more DK weight leftovers I’ll make a Blended Shawl with even more colours.

As I said earlier, DK weight yarn isn’t a big step up from fingering weight. I highly recommend trying it! Has anyone made a worsted weight Blended Shawl? I’d love to see it!

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