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Odora KAL Cast-On

Hopefully you all have your yarn in hand for the Odora KAL cast-on today? The Design Team and I have cast-on and we’re flying through chart 1. I love how satisfying the early progress is when knitting top-down shawls.

Odora is written for a garter-tab cast on, a very traditional method of constructing this style of shawl. If the technique is new to you, Berroco has a how-to video to walk you through this cast-on.

I have a personal preference for beginning my shawls with a provisional cast-on. The method omits the tab, which tends to create a small bump after the stitches are picked up. If you want to try knitting a triangular shawl with this cast-on, here’s how to do it.

Using the provisional method of your choice (here’s a video for a crochet provisional cast-on, and here’s another way to work a provisional cast-on), cast on the number of stitches you’ll have after creating the garter tab—for the Odora Shawl, that would be 12 stitches. Be sure to leave a long tail for grafting the stitches later. For the first row, work the WS row that establishes the stitch markers, then continue in the pattern as written.

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When you’re ready, place the stitches from the provisional cast-on onto 2 needles, dividing them in half. For this shawl, you’ll have 6 stitches on the first needle,  and 6 stitches on the second needle.
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Hold the needles parallel to each other so that halves face each other end to end and using the cast-on tail threaded on a tapestry needle, graft the stitches together using the Kitchener Stitch.

In the last photo you can see the joined stitches. This method creates a slight angle on the top edge of the shawl, this can be blocked out in the finishing.

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Here is a round up of our Odora KAL WIPs here in the office: Amy Palmer is knitting her shawl in Folio, the yarn the pattern is written for is shade #4512, a cheerful sunshine yellow. Donna Yacino, the mistress of Pattern Support and the keeper of all our knitted samples, is knitting her shawl in Corsica. This yarn has a smooth crisp hand, rather different than Folio, so Donna opted to go down a few needle sizes for her shawl. This is resulting in a slightly finer gauge so Donna has a few extra balls of yarn set aside in case she needs them.

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I am knitting my Odora in Ayni from the Amano yarn line, made in Peru and distributed by Berroco. Ayni is a blend of 80% baby alpaca, 20% silk with a similar put-up to Folio and a similar drape but a little less halo from the fibers which appeals to me. I went down a needle size as well, mostly because I’m such a loose knitter that I worried I’d lose too much stitch definition.

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Have you cast on for your Odora yet? We’d love to see! Tag pictures of your WIP on social media with the hashtag #BerrocoKAL and join the discussion in the Berroco Lovers Ravelry Group.

-AC

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