#mini shawls

This past week and a half, I haven’t been working so much on my usual WIPs, but have been participating in Françoise Danoy’s (Aroha Knits) “Seeker Challenge,” wherein mini-shawls and samplers depicting types of knitting styles all over the globe were practiced.

My own examples from top to bottom are as follows:

Day 1: Mini-Shetland crescent shawl;

Bonus: 2nd mini-Shetland crescent shawl (an even prettier example!);

Day 2: Estonian mini-shawl (this had the characteristic “nupp” pattern);

Bonus: Estonian swatch (not so much a shawl, but still had the “nupps”);

Day 3: Russian mini-shawl (”bobbles” seemed to be preferred to “nupps”; also note the type of increase and decrease pattern;

Day 4: Japanese mini-shawl (floral lace knitting border with lace work on both right and wrong sides); and

The original Spring Feverish series ran from 2017 to 2019, probably not consistently—I have not looked over each of them to see exactly, but I think there were four and then I added one at random two years later. That seems like a really long time ago at this point, so it’s almost uncomfortable to promote them (I do really like the Miniature Moon one. Was one of the neater things I have made. I also like the garter one and the last one, although that one was abbreviated from a larger shawl and I kinda wish I’d finished writing the bigger version. I knit two of them! They must have been pretty engaging! I took cool photos of the rust-colored one!).

Now that I’m revisiting the idea (a pattern series under the constraints that everything had to be small projects, headband/neckerchiefs or at least kerchief-adjacent, and sort of decent for transitional weather both as projects and finished objects (so even without the kerchief/tiny shawl constraint, mittens wouldn’t work—they won’t be unpleasant to work on if it’s warm, but you can’t wear them right away)) in 2024, I’m wondering if I lost sight of the small-project aspect a little. All of these are much more involved; they’re probably more process-knitter friendly. They’re still one-skein designs, but they’ll take more than an afternoon from start to finish. I think it makes them more versatile, and I hope it won’t make them less appealing.