A few months ago I was browsing on Ravelry and spotted the most amazing shawl; a beautiful combination of colorwork (in stripes!) and a graceful asymmetric crescent. I knew I had found a real gem and seconds later I looked at the project count and realized I was a little bit late to the party and that pretty much everyone else had also discovered this gem. It’s the most recent (in my memory) in the everyone-must-knit-this genre and I totally get it – this pattern is awesome! It’s the amazing Color Affection by Veera Välimäki.
Despite the shape being so interesting, I knew the color choice was going to be the real star in this project and as soon as I saw the pattern the only thing I could think of was Madelinetosh. I also showed the pattern to Sasha’s mom and then she could only think about knitting it in Madelinetosh too, and luckily we were together so we could go in search of our Madelinetosh almost immediately! I chose tosh sock in a moody palette of grey, purplish-grey, and dark purple (clearly some of my go to colors) and Sasha’s mom chose a beautiful mix of fall colors. (The actual names of my colors were dust bowl, kale and dahlia.)
Color Affection is a lovely pattern, but I’m not going to lie to you and say those final rows don’t get long! However – I’m typically in heaven if I’ve got a sea of garter stitch ahead of me and if you throw in something like color changes to sweeten the deal, it’s perfect. Keeping track of the increases got a little bit tedious, but wasn’t too hard to pay attention to. I did decide (as suggested by many knitters before me) to add a yarn over between the first two stitches that I then dropped on the return row so that the edge wouldn’t get too tight.
I wet blocked my shawl just by laying it out in the shape I wanted on the bed (I wasn’t looking to stretch out the garter stitch that much) and ended up with a lovely shape with these little curls at the end that hang down when I’m wearing the shawl. (This is me trying to get Sophie to come over and be in the picture . . . )
I’m absolutely in love with the finished product and I’ve been wearing it everywhere! There’s actually a lot more fabric to this shawl than my usual go-to’s (these two), so I find it really easy to wear (I’m not worried about it slipping out of place) and super cozy. And did I mention the stripes? I’m such a sucker for stripes! And Madelinetosh . . .
