scrappy prayer shawl recipe

another thing that my church knitting group does, besides these blankets, are scrappy prayers shawls. the fun part for me is that they nearly always come out of my stash… so i get to coordinate the colors and throw in odds and ends of everything. this is perfect for working with smallish amounts of handspun etc.  in my opinion, having several textures and kinds of yarn is key. click through the picture to flickr to see what yarns i chose. the other thing about these shawls is they can be passed from person to person and knit on by many, while still looking great.

here’s the how to:

get a pile of yarn. for this one, my pile ranges from bulky to worsted.
choose a needle size. we’re using a 10.5 US (6.5 mm) 24 in. circular. i usually do somewhere from 9-11 US.

set up:
cast 5 sts onto your needle (this is the back of the neck)
row 1: k1, yo, k1, yo, k1, yo, k1, yo, k1
row 2: knit
you may want to mark the bold knit stitch – it is the center stitch in the shawl.

repeat:
RS – k1, yo, k to center stitch, yo, k center stitch, yo, k to last stitch, yo, k1
WS – knit

repeat these two rows until you think it’s big enough or run out of yarn. change colors as needed/wanted.  be sure to bind off loosely!

stockingnet:
to switch to stockingnet, work WS purl instead of knit. to make it even more fancy in the stockingnet version, work the first row of a new color as a WS knit, to create a garter ridge.

on ravelry here.

EDIT: i did complete the shawl – so photos!

p.s. i cannot promise that you’ll see this shawl completed.  we often give them away right when we’re done and, as you can see, i already did my part of it.

p.p.s. not everyone wants a scrappy one of these… if the person is deemed more sophisticated, i usually recycle a sweater and we make theirs all one color ;) but the scrappy ones are our favorite to make.