GATEWAY TO FAIL
-..and I thought 20s was not too much...- Once upon a time there was an enthusiastic knitter, who wanted to make a triangular lace shawl. But the enthusiastic knitter made a tiny mistake and ended up with something lacy but not triangular. Enthusiastic knitter was very sad because she felt she completely failed with her shawl, when another needleswisher came to the rescue. The other needleswisher blocked what looked like a messed up bundle of blue and to enthusiastic knitter's surprise, came back with a beautiful crescent shaped lace shawl with a ruffled edge. So beautiful in fact, that the needleswisher resolved to figure out how to repeat the mistake, but this time on purpose. Thus was born the Moko shawl, or in a fancier language, Le Moko.
The one and only, original Moko Some advice from the ever helpful Internet, a bit of brain work and indecent amounts of stamina finally produced the shawl pictured below. The shape was again a bit different, but the structural principles behind the shawl were accounted for. There is NO detailed knitting pattern for either shawl, nor will there be, rather this document contains general instructions on how to achieve this particular shawl shape. I hope the instructions bring joy and mirth, or failing that, at least not too much consternation. A word of warning though, this shawl is not necessarily for the faint of heart, nor for those lacking in patience. Trust me on this.
Le Moko,i.e.the second incarnation
YARN & NEEDLES
The original blue shawl was knitted with Austermann Step Classic yarn and required about 180g, its wingspan is about 106cm and the height along the centre line is about 42cm. The white and green shawl was knitted with Red Heart DK and a bit of merino yarn of a very similar gauge. This shawl weighs approximately 300g and has the approximate wingspan of 136cm and height of about 52cm along the centre line. Since this is not a specific pattern, but merely a technique tutorial for making this shawl shape, no particular recommendations on yarn or needles are given. -Satatieto - wantonlunacy@wordpress.com 2013-
BEGIN:
Start the shawl like a normal triangular shawl, using any preferred starting method. Knit the shawl while increasing 4 stitches on every second row. The increases in the white shawl are follow the common practice of +1 on the right edge, +1 on each side of the centre line and +1 on the left edge.
STRUCTURE:
The steadily expanding structure of the Mok? shawl is achieved by regularly adding more increases. In the photo below, this is drawn on the white example shawl. The red lines show the pattern repeats, with X being the number of stitches in the pattern repeat. The red circles on the other half of the shawl show the locations of the increases. The number of stitches in the pattern repeat has a great effect on the shape of the finished shawl. The blue shawl had 14 stitches in the pattern repeat, whereas the white shawl had 20s. The fewer stitches in the pattern repeat, the quicker the shawl starts to form ruffles. Therefore, if one wants a large shawl with mild ruffling, one should pick a large pattern repeat. If one wants a smaller and strongly ruffled shawl, one should pick a smaller pattern repeat. Keep knitting the until the number of stitches on each side of the centre line is twice the number of stitches in your chosen pattern repeat. Then divide the stitches into groups, each of which contains as many stitches as are in your pattern repeat. Resume knitting and add 2s to every pattern repeat on every right side round. Keep going until you have again doubled the number of stitches in each pattern repeat, then again divide the stitches into groups the size of the original pattern repeat. Keep knitting this way until a) the shawl reaches desired size, b) it's ruffly enough, c) there's no more yarn left or c) you're sick and tired of the whole thing and desperately want to go do something else. In theory there's no limit to the possible number of stitches in the pattern repeat, but since the rounds get larger very quickly in this shawl, picking a large pattern repeat may be somewhat self destructive behaviour. Unless of course one is the type of person, who likes to grind down granite boulders by hand. Yes, the final rounds ARE very long For example, the white shawl had a pattern repeat of 20s. I kept knitting until I had 80+1s altogether, with 40 on each side of the centre stitch (for the sake of simplicity, I included the edge stitches in the pattern repeat, feel free to not do that). I then divided the 80 stitches into four groups, 20 stitches each. I then resumed knitting and kept knitting until every group now had 40s, thus giving me 160+1s. I then divided these 40s groups again into 20s groups and started increasing again. And so on and so on and .. well I'm sure you know what I mean. According to my calculations, the last round in the white shawl had 1281 stitches. And yes, that IS where the name of the pattern comes from. The white shawl also has an additional zigzag edging, made with a very simple stitch pattern, where on each side of a point there is +1 stitch and in the middle there's two decreases, first right leaning and then left leaning. The edging is optional and can be replaced with something else, or just a cast off.
X= the pattern repeat. Circles= the increases on the edges of the pattern repeats I would like to finish off with a close up of the white shawl's ruffled edge. Both the blue and white shawl rest very well on the shoulders and wrap around the neck nicely. It would be very interesting to see this shawl with different size pattern repeats and even with various stitch patterns. I wish others (too) will have fun with this shawl and I'm very interested to see how many will pick up this, despite the prospect of endless last rounds.
-Satatieto - wantonlunacy@wordpress.com 2013-
