I love working with singles yarn, especially when it comes from Life in the Long Grass. The yarn is a dream to knit with. It’s a soft superwash merino and as it’s dyed by Life in the Long grass, the colours are STUNNING.
It got me thinking.
Way back in January 2020, I designed a biased, slip stitch shawl called Neon Skyline. This shawl has a lot to offer. It’s the embodiment of fun slip stitch colourwork. It has an interesting bias shape. It has all the elements of a creative colour play shawl which, allow you to add some interesting techniques to your knitter’s toolkit.
My knitterly loves of colour play, dreamy yarns, and shawl design had aligned. This is the perfect chance to use this shawl to introduce you to slip stitch colourwork.
So of course, we’ve built a workshop!
Step-by-step Colourwork Shawl
In our workshops, we’ll go through every step of the process of creating the Neon Skyline shawl. In the videos we work on a small swatch, so you can see all of the techniques worked easily on a smaller scale. In this workshop you’ll learn:
how to read the colourwork chart
how to do the slip stitch technique
tips for working two colours, maintaining tension, and dealing with all those ends!
how the shawl shape all fits together.
This can really give you a great overview of the project before you ever begin. A bit like being hands a map before your journey! Of course, the workshop itself has a lot more to offer. Just click here to check it out:
Yarn Combinations for Neon Skyline
If you’re still here, you want to know more about the yarn I mentioned earlier, right?
The yarn combinations for this shawl are a little unusual. But you LOVE to explore yarns, right? They are the perfect talking point at knit nights and festivals. Nothing brings knitters together like their love of all things woolly.
This shawl combines a singles fingering weight yarn with our Nua Sport yarn. Typically, you would stick to a single weight yarn in a design, but combining weights has surprising advantages. See, now you want to know more, don’t you?
The contrast in texture and weights gave a helping hand to the colourwork, allowing it to show up in high definition. We are talking about colourwork that really POPS.
As well as weight and fibre differences in the yarn, you also want to ensure you’ve got a nice colour contrast between your main and contrast colours. If one colour is dark, you want the other colour to be bright. That way, when you work your slip stitch pattern, each stitch will really show up next to the other yarn.
If you love the idea of colourwork but the reality intimidates you, then slip stitch colourwork is your friend. With this type of colourwork, you are only ever working a single colour on one row. You create the two colour effect by slipping the second colours on that row. This makes it an ideal place to start exploring colourwork.
The slip stitch colourwork in this pattern is all worked in garter stitch i.e. knitting every row. This is sometimes called ‘Mosaic’ colourwork due to the mosaic like effect it creates. In the pattern I’ve small stripes of colourwork which are completely charted and written, so you can pick your favourite way of working.
The other advantage of our Neon Skyline shawl is the small stretches of colourwork in the pattern. You can concentrate for short stretches and the rest of the shawl is very relaxing. Making it a great project for taking with you on the go.
Colourwork Tutorials
In case you just need a handy tutorial for slip stitch colourwork, trapping floats or how to choose your shawl colours, I’ll leave these right here:
Slip Stitch Colourwork
How to Choose Shawl Colours
Trapping Colourwork Floats
Neon Skyline Shawl Shape
The two things that I love about this shawl are the colourwork and the shape. It uses increases and decreases to do all the work for you, creating an ‘arrow’ that decreases in on itself. Can you see it?
The shawl begins with just a few stitches, increasing each end and decreasing at the middle. This creates an interesting biased effect, which causes the centre of the shawl to slope down to a point. When you’ve finished working the full width of the shawl, you’ll also have to use decreases to ‘fill in’ the final part of the shawl. Trust me, it was harder to write those three sentences than it was to knit the shawl!
I really love when you can get the shaping of your knit to do all the work for you. In this shawl, the increases and decreases do all the heavy lifting for you. You just need to keep working them and the shape will emerge! In case you need to know more pattern details, I’ll just pop them in here:
Pattern Details
SIZE
One size
FINISHED MEASUREMENTS
Width: 57” / 145 cm
Depth: 42” / 106.5 cm
YARN
C1: Stolen Stitches ‘Nua’ (60% Merino, 20% Yak, 20% Linen; 153 yds / 140 m per 1.76 oz / 50 g); colour:
Late Night Blues (9811); 4 skeins
C2: Life In the Long Grass ‘Singles’ (100% superwash Merino, 400 yds / 366 m per 3.53 oz / 100 g); Colour; Chirp; 1 skein
or
C2: Townhouse Yarns ‘Fade St 4 ply’(70% Merino superwash, 30% Silk; 437 yds / 400 m per 3.53 oz / 100 g); colour: Strike a Pose; 1 skein
Approximate Yardage: C1: 588 yds / 538 m, C2: 400 yds / 366 m
NEEDLES & NOTIONS
US size 6 / 4 mm needle, circ 32” / 80 cm long or longer
Always use a needle size that gives you the gauge listed, as every knitter’s gauge is unique.
Tapestry needle, lockable marker.
GAUGE
18 sts and 40 rows = 4” / 10 cm in Garter Stitch blocked
20 sts and 52 rows = 4” / 10 cm in Mosaic Stitch blocked
Where To Buy
You’ve got lots of options for how to buy our Neon Skyline Shawl. All you have to do is pick what works best for you!
Remember that if you get the full video workshop, this will include the pattern, so no need to purchase the pattern separately.
Pattern only: Stolen Stitches or Ravelry
Project Workshop here.
Yarn kits here.
The only question left is will I see you casting on a Neon Skyline in your future?