Tide Is Rolling In

Tide is the third shawl in the Beach Collection, and probably the easiest. If you thought that Wake and Current were a bit too difficult, Tide may just be for you! You can buy now for $6 USD, or as part of the e-book Knitting the Beach.

Tide shawl detail

I knew when I was swatching for this design that it really needed a variegated yarn to show off the subtle curves of the lace pattern. Most lace patterns can’t stand up to a highly variegated yarn, but this one was asking for it! So I had a look around, and found the perfect color combination on one of my favorite yarns; Malabrigo sock in the Caribeno colorway.Tide shawl

I cast on first with a size 6/4 mm needle. Too loose. I started over with a 4/3.5 mm. I couldn’t settle on an edging that worked with the main pattern, so I was working the whole shawl in stockinette stitch, only it wasn’t working. I added a little garter stitch on the left edge, it looked good! Ripped it out, started over one more time. And that was it. A shawl was born. I showed it to my knitting group and they thought it looked like the tide rolling in, which fit my beach theme, and so it had a name.

Tide shawl

Straight off the needles Tide seemed a little small. Lace does have a tendency to look small and scrunched up before it’s blocked, so I gave it a nice bath and spread it out. The one skein size ended up being 70 inches/200 cm wide and 17 inches/42.5 cm deep at my gauge of 20 stitches and 22.5 rows per 4 inches/10 cm. The pattern includes directions for making larger sizes, and of course the size can also be adjusted by changing your yarn and gauge.

I didn’t have my blocking wires, and I knew that t-pins alone wouldn’t get the top edge perfectly straight, so I tried a trick I had read about on the Knitting Therapy blog. I keep a skein of fine white cotton yarn in my knitting bag for holding stitches, so I got it out and cut two lengths of it about nine feet long. The first one I threaded through all the holes on the top edge of the shawl, the second went through the center of each scallop along the bottom. I pinned one end of the yarn through the top edge and pulled the other end tight, that was all that was needed to make that edge perfectly straight. The bottom edge was a bit more difficult, I pinned the yarn between each scallop so it would pull the scallops down and make them more pronounced. By this time the shawl seemed almost dry so I sprayed each scallop with my spray bottle just to be sure they would set the way they were pinned. Five hours later when I removed the blocking pins and yarn the shawl stayed exactly the same as it had been pinned. Just like magic!

TideThe side-to-side construction of this shawl creates a triangle that is wider than it is deep, so you can get a usable size out of just one skein of fingering weight. If you weigh your yarn at the beginning of the knitting, and again at the middle, you can be sure that you won’t run out, and you’ll use as much of your lovely yarn as possible. You can see what my test knitters did with the Tide pattern here on Ravelry.

I hope you are enjoying Knitting the Beach! I love to see pictures of what you are knitting with my patterns, and you can find me all over the internet using the buttons below. Thank you for knitting!