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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Fantastic!