Project Musings

I am wanting to make a Strawberry Pie Shawl with some pink Elann Baby Silk I got in a swap.
Well, kinda.

I don't get how she wrote the strawberries. When I follow her instructions I get lopsided thingies I don't care for. I don't know if it's her or me, but I recharted the strawberries.

And I don't think the shape was fully thought out. It appears the thought process was "I don't want a solid circle. What I want to do is take a circle and cut a slit in it so that it goes on like a cape." So there are normal circular increases, but when you reach the end of a 'round', instead of going around, you turn and knit back in rows. Sounds like it should work, right?

Not if you're using spiraling increases.

It's got this odd shape where one side is straight and the other's flared. It's very obvious why that happens. Each 'wedge' has increases on the right side, only. So your right side has increases, and the left doesn't. In circular knitting, you just keep going around and that's cool, but in back and forth, not so much.

So, I'm trying to figure out how to address this.

I could just do it as a circular shawl. That actually makes things easier, because it becomes all knitting instead of having to purl back across some long-ass rows at the end there. But, I'm not completely sure I want a circular shawl. They take more futzing to wear, and really need a shawl pin. (Although that would be a good excuse to get myself a nice shawl pin. ;) )

To keep it cape-like, I don't think I could just put another increase at the other end, because then that last wedge is going to grow faster than the others. Even if that would work, then both ends will flare, and that will hang oddly. Trying to straighten the increases wouldn't really be practical; single increases in circular knitting naturally want to spiral.

So, after mentally rambling for far too long, I guess my options are J-shaped or circular. If I can't have what I really want without lots of redesign, I'll go for the option that saves me metric buttloads of purling. I'll do circular.