Using Up Leftovers for my Fade

Finding My Fade

​1 ½ years ago I made an impulse purchase of a shawl kit.  The kit contained 6 luscious colors of merino and a pattern for knitting a lace shawl.  Only one problem:  I am not much of a knitter, and I had never woven lace before.
 
The shawl pattern was for “Find Your Fade” – a very popular shawl pattern developed by Andrea Mowry.  I arranged the colors from gold to rust to cranberry to a variegated blend to medium gray to  light gray and back to gold.

Find My Fade

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Within a week, I cast on a few stitches and began the ultimate knitting challenge.  Many a bad word escaped my lips before I had knitted up a square inch of the shawl, much to the amusement of my friend Suanne – who is both a weaver and a knitter.
 
I struggled mightily with this pattern, which, I believe by knitters’ standards, is probably not very difficult – just stunningly beautiful. I learned that I am not very good at counting stitches, not very patient, and that my hands do not tolerate knitting for more than an hour at a time.  And trust me I am a SLOW knitter. 
 
The GOOD news was that I quickly learned how to TINK.  Little did I know that there was actually a word that means unknitting.  I got pretty darned good at it.  And if I do say so myself, unknitting lace is not easy.  So allow me to pat myself on the back.

​Over the next 14 months, I knit, I tinked, I counted stitches over and over again, and chose to ignore a couple of mistakes that I knit right on past.  My husband threatened to wear ear plugs while I was working on the shawl.  I would put the shawl away for a month at a time, and then I would work hard at it for another couple of weeks.  It was slow going, but I did finally finish it.  I even like it a lot.  Ironically, I can’t wear wool, so what do I do with it now?

Find My Fade

Weaving My Fade

​I had finished my knitted shawl, but I had over half of the merino left over.  For a change, I decided I would try to use up the leftovers rather than hoarding it in my ever-growing stash.  I would weave a shawl inspired by the Find My Fade shawl.  Now weaving is something I am more comfortable with.

This would be EASY.

• I decided to use the six colors grading from gold to light gray.
• I would weave an 8-harness point twill because I wanted something simple to emphasize the color gradation. 
• I worked up a plan for using each of the colors in sequence in an attempt to use up as much of each color as possible. 
• I would wind a 3 ½ yard warp, 365 ends, sett at 16 epi
• I decided (with a little help from my friend Sue) that rust would be the best color to use as weft.   I happened to have some 8/2 tencel in my ever-growing stash that would be perfect.

​OOPS, that didn’t quite work out. 
 
My calculations for how much of each color I needed didn’t exactly pan out as planned.  As I measured my warp, I came up shorter than expected in the rust and cranberry sections and had to adjust in the variegated and gray sections.  Fortunately, I was still able to eke out the 22 ½” width I wanted.  But I had very little left over of 4 of the colors and none of the rust.  Despite the trials of winding the warp, this was pretty easy. ​​
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The leftovers

Weave My Fade

Weave My Fade

​The inspiration shawl and the woven shawl are different yet related.  Both use the same colorway, both are soft and warm, and both made me happy, although for different reasons.  But just between you and me, I would choose weaving over knitting any day.

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