Get out your needles and start knitting! Here’s the PDF for Step 1 of the Pangea Shawl—just click and print.
When I started knitting this piece in the silk/wool blend, I was thinking moss and lichen and bark—a sort of primordial forest. I was quite content with what I was producing, but at the same time, I kept imagining the shawl in blue as well, the sparkling, clear blue of a shallow, pristine bay above white sands. Hence the name Pangea, to honor a time when our planet was just one great land mass surrounded by one enormous sea.
Thanks to Kristine Brooks of Curious Creek Fibers and my test-knitter Chris, I’m now having the pleasure of watching the blue shawl I imagined come into being to compliment the completed green shawl.
Chris did find a few mistakes in the chart for Step 1 (but none in Step 2!), so I’ve corrected those. Thanks to her help, you’ll have a more satisfactory knitting experience.
I plan to post one step every Monday for the next five weeks. The first few steps will go more quickly than the last few as the row length grows. I’ve tried to divide the knitting up so that most steps will offer you something a bit new (Step 3 is the exception, being a continuation of the second stitch established after the transition rows in Step 2.) At the end of Step 1, here’s what you’ll have:
Chris is running a lifeline as she finishes each step so you’ll be able to see where each new segment begins and ends as her shawl grows.
And now for the prize draw.
As an incentive to keep all of you knitting along, I’m putting together a prize draw for the participants. To be entered, you’ll need to finish your shawl within 10 days of when the last step is posted and email me a picture of your completed shawl (shATwhatifknitsDOTcom). I’ll post a gallery of the finished shawls and will draw the name of one lucky winner who will receive a 900+ yard skein of delicious, hand-dyed sock-weight superwash wool from my LYS. I may add other prizes. I’m also thinking of offering a “Viewers’ Choice” prize that could go to the knitter of the completed shawl that gets the most compliments in the comments section. Sound like fun?
The Fine Print
I’m offering this pattern free of charge. Feel free to make photocopies and/or enlargements for your own use. If you want to share the pattern with others, please encourage them to check out this blog and print a pattern for themselves. You are welcome to use the shawl you knit from this pattern as part of a fundraiser for any non-profit (bazaars, raffles, etc.), but please do not sell it for commercial purposes and please do give a shout-out to What If Knits if you can.
Enjoy!
Large Pangea chart
Here is a larger version of Chart A for the Pangea shawl as a PDF file.