Find your fade – from scraps!

This is my first completed lockdown knitting project, even though I am now well on my way to completing my second! I cast on this Andrea Mowry Find Your Fade made from scraps just a couple of days before the lockdown was announced.

Knitting this shawl has been such a source of comfort to me during this time, it’s really repetitive and doesn’t require remembering anything difficult. It also doesn’t have to fit, so if any stress was causing me to tighten up my tension at any point it wouldn’t matter.

I also got so much joy from the people surrounding me that led to this beautiful collection of yarn. My exquisitely talented friend Patsy of Patsypoo Makes (both an amazing knitter and sewist!) very generously messaged me to ask if I had any uses for any of her yarn scraps, I told her I was planning a Find Your Fade shawl in green-yellow-pink and I would joyously accept any fingering weight scraps in those colours.

Boy did she come through! Just a few days later a beautiful parcel of yarns turned up at my door in the perfect colours. I added a bit of yarn from my own stash that I had put away for this purpose and also included some green that my friend Jess of Skein and the Stitch had given me.

I had tried to cast it on at the beginning of February so I could buddy-knit it along with my friend Jess. But I just kept going wrong. It was like my hands couldn’t get used to the fine yarn and I kept ending up with the wrong number of stitches, I felt like the pattern made total sense to me so I couldn’t understand why I was going wrong. I still have no idea what the problem was!

After a little bit of time away from it, I tried again and for some reason it just clicked, I couldn’t stop knitting! It is so addictive watching those colours fade into and out of one another, I just couldn’t wait to get to the next one!

I got a little bit confused when we stopped doing the decreases at one of the sides as I was ending up with a ‘corner’ in my work. I messaged Jess about it and she said that it was supposed to be like that as it was actually the bottom ‘point’ of the shawl starting to appear. I am so glad I messaged as I really thought I was doing something wrong and I nearly pulled several rows back! I think this could have been a bit clearer in the pattern.

As I got around two thirds of the way through I had a little wobble. I was starting to think that the shawl was turning out to look a bit more Molly Weasley/Bag Lady than the cool ombre that I was going for. I decided not to use some of the patterned pinky-creams I was originally intending to use and decided to fade straight from yellow into just plain cream. As a result, the last colour change looks a bit abrupt but I am really pleased with how the large chunk of cream neutralises all the craziness and results in a really wearable shawl.

In most instances, I managed to use the scraps Patsy sent me to the very end, leaving no new scraps to store. I highly recommend this pattern if you have some fingering weight scraps that need dealing with!

It’s getting a bit warm now for this but it’s not like I am going out anywhere anyway! I will look forward to wearing this loads come Autumn.