Find Your Fade

If you've ever held a pair of knitting needles in your hands, you've probably heard of the Find Your Fade shawl.  Everyone is knitting the pattern and for good reason.  It's a super simple knit, the pattern is easily memorized, the knitting is constantly changing so you never get bored and the color options are endless.  I don't remember ever enjoying a project more & the 2581 other folks on Ravelry who've knitted a Find Your Fade can't be wrong.

Find Your Fade

Thanks to ice storm Stella (Everyone else on the east coast got snow but we got nothing but freezing rain.) I finished my Find Your Fade yesterday afternoon and had it blocking by supper time.  It's huge!  HUGE!  My dining room table seats 10 comfortably and the shawl is as wide as the table & it's hanging way off both ends.  WAY off the ends!

I ran into a slight snag near the end.  I ran out of yarn.  The pattern calls for seven colors & I only used six.  I used the green/brown skein twice.  I thought it would be okay.  From looking at the schematic on the pattern, it looked like the stripes start small, get bigger, then shrink back down again.  But they don't.  Shrink that is. It's an optical allusion.

Anyway, I ran out of yarn.  I was only short three garter ridge rows & the yarn fumes got to me and made me forget that technically, I was knitting an elongated mitered square triangle.  The yarn fume brain caused me to overlook the mechanics of a mitered angle.  I was just thinking that the end would be blunt and not pointy.  I could easily live with a blunt ended triangle.  After all, it's only short three garter ridges.  How blunt could it be?

Oops

Not blunt at all.  The pointed triangle tip is still pointy because not completing all the rows on a mitered angle doesn't cause blunt ends.  It causes a weird jag at the mitered angle.  Dammit.

But it's okay.  I'm calling it a design element.

Other than that one little 'design element' the shawl turned out fantastic.  I can't even put into words how happy I am with the way the colors merged together. I used Knit Pick's Hawthorne and look how great the colors blend.  I started with St. Johns, the brown, then added Laurelhurst, a green/brown.

Find Your Fade

After the Laurelhurst, I added Rose City. It doesn't show up in the photo but the Rose City has hints of gold in it which match the golden brown in the Laurelhurst.

Knit Picks Hawthorne

After the Rose City, I used Vancouver.

Find Your Fade

Vancouver blended into Poseidon.

Find Your Fade

After Poseidon, I used the remainder of the Laurelhurst.  This is where I ran into trouble.  I didn't have enough Laurelhurst to complete what should have been the sixth color's stripe so I added in the final color, Serpent, early.

Knit Picks Hawthorne

And since I started using Serpent early, I didn't have enough to complete the shawl.  Thus, my 'design element.'

I'm a lot less worried about the design element than I am about what color combination to use for the next one.  I don't remember ever casting off a project and immediately wanting to cast on another.  But Find Your Fade.... this pattern is addictive!

By the way, it is Wednesday and I'm supposed to be talking about what I'm reading while I knit. I'm still reading Nineteen Eighty Four.  I'm enjoying reading it much more than I did back in high school but it's still not exactly a 'can't put it down' type of book. I may be reading it for a while.

Join me over at Ginny's place, Small Things to see what others are knitting and reading this week.


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