Ashburn

The Ashburn shawl, designed by prolific knitwear designer Melanie Berg who describes it as

'… an eye-catching triangle shawl with asymmetrical flair.  Garter and slipped stitch patterns create a subtle medley of textures, and an endless combination of color choices lets you be as demure or as bold as you like'

I used a bright blue from Easy Knits (he calls it Tardis blue) and a skein of Madeline Tosh Spectrum (a blue/purple/green lightly variegated lace weight that I held double).  It’s mostly garter stitch, with some slipped stitches thrown in for texture, and is quite easy to knit in front of the TV or while chatting.  A side note, the blue was absolutely colour fast – I was very impressed given the intensity of the colour.

The combination of decreases and increases at each end gives it the shape of an extended, asymmetrical triangle.  Ultimately though, I thought the triangle was too shallow, so I cut some paper in the same shape and played around with folding it into a cowl. 

Voila, I wrapped the cast on corner around and stitched it down and I ended up with a cowl at a good length to double-wrap without risk of strangulation.  I particularly like that more of the slipped stitches are visible, as it sits quite flat across my chest, like a bandana. 

If I were to knit it, or a shawl of a similar shape, again, I would slow down the decreases – perhaps I would only decrease half as often as required.