Pattern Release: Mini Maximization

Although it's been a busy month for pattern releases already, I have one more to squeeze in before the year is over! This new shawl actually started back in June, when I traveled to Cleveland for the TNNA summer show with my friend Lisa of Fibernymph Dye Works. We were talking about future pattern collaborations, and I can't remember which of us brought it up, but somehow we got to talking about ideas to use up mini skein sets. As I contemplated it more, naturally my head went right to my favorite item to design: a shawl. It occurred to me that the biggest challenge in using mini skeins is that your yardage is limited, so why not design a shawl where you use each mini skein until it basically runs out? After all, a shawl doesn't need to be any particular size, and it's easy to bind off when you're done or out of yarn. So Lisa dyed up two sets of minis for me in beautiful autumnal colors, one semisolid and one speckled, and I started knitting. It worked out just as I'd hoped.

Mini Maximization (so named because I believe in truth in advertising!) is an amazingly flexible design in that you can use any amount of yarn, in any weight, and work at any gauge you'd like. My sample used fingering weight (Lisa's Bounce base), but if you have scraps or leftovers of heavier yarn, they will make a very cozy shawl. You may need to do a little swatching to determine your needle size, but the goal is only to get a fabric that you like. The shawl is constructed from the top down using a typical crescent shawl construction, but because of the way I've worked the stripes, it actually ends up being more of a half-circle shape.

What makes these stripes different from a typically striped item is that they use a technique that I guess is technically intarsia but without the fiddliness that intarsia usually entails. There are no yarn bobbins to juggle or strands to twist or tangles to undo. Instead, I've "unvented" a way to insert intarsia stripes by employing short rows. That means that you've got two strands of yarn attached to the knitting at all times, and when you use one, the other one just hangs out until you're ready for it. You simply switch colors when one essentially runs out (i.e., you don't have enough yarn left to complete another stripe) and you bind off on the last row when you're almost out of yarn or are ready to be done.

Lisa has dyed up a bunch of kits for this shawl, and for the next two days only (December 20 and 21), they're on sale as part of her 12 Yays of Christmas promotion. You'll also find the pattern in my Ravelry shop if you've already got a bunch of mini skeins on hand and want to get started right away.