Almost a year ago, I knit my Brioband + Fantastitch Combination Shawl using my left over scrap yarns. I loved how it turned out, but I wanted to knit it again with a more intentional palette. Keep reading for more details on my Pretty in Pink Brioband + Fantastitch combination shawl!
YARN
I wanted to pick a pink, purple, and orange palette for this shawl since I really love that combination. I had recently finished knitting the Aurora Cabin Shawl in a warm yellow/red/brown color palette which was beautiful, but wanted to come back to something familiar.
I have mostly single skeins of fingering weight in my stash so that I can make these types of multi-color shawls, and these are the colors I chose:
- White Peach (Melted Baby Suri) qing fibre
- Electric Berry (Merino HT Fingering) moondrake co.
- Madeleine (Kumo) la bien aimee
- Baby Rose (Merino HT Fingering) moondrake co.
- Fluoro Morganite (Cashmerino) la bien aimee
- As If (Cashmerino) la bien aimee
- As If (Kumo) la bien aimee
I loved the mix of pinks/purples/orange and I thought there would be some good contrast with the dark and light. I used three fluffy skeins and four regular fingering skeins for some texture contrast.
I was really excited to knit with these yarns and see how good of a job I did taking notes from the first time I made this Combination Shawl.
BRIOBAND + FANTASTITCH COMBINATION SHAWL
In my original post, I shared how the Fantastitch is one of my favorite shawl designs, and how much I loved the brioche in the Brioband shawl. I wanted to combine my favorite elements of each shawl and create something new.
I had made a rough sketch of what stitches I wanted to incorporate into the shawl, and I sort of knit each part until I was ready to move on to the next section. I used all leftover and scrap yarns to make that shawl, and I really enjoyed the process of working on something unique to me without any “pressure” to follow the pattern or use certain colors.
Of course you can always knit anything however you want and with whatever colors/yarn you want. But it was extra fun for me to feel like I was creating something without any guidelines.
PRETTY IN PINK COMBINATION SHAWL
With this Pretty in Pink version of the Brioband + Fantastitch Combination Shawl, I was excited to knit a design I really enjoyed in a palette I really love.
Needles
I knit this shawl using my 5″ US 5 Chiaogoo interchangeable needles on a 50″ cable. I have the 4″ needle set, but I bought these 5″ needles separately because it’s a little more comfortable for me to hold when knitting a large shawl.
Most of the Chiaogoo interchangeable sets work together, so if you are considering a set, but don’t want to make the initial investment you can just get the individual needles you need to test them out.
Pretty In Pink Details
I don’t want this post to be too redundant compared to the original Brioband + Fantastitch Combination Shawl post, so I’ll mostly share the changes I made and my experience knitting from my old notes. As a reminder, the Brioband shawl and the Fantastitch shawl are paid patterns by Stephen West, so I won’t be sharing stitch counts or other specifics.
I hadn’t knit brioche in a while and I was really excited to cast on the brioche tab cast on. I chose the Baby Rose and Electric Berry colors because I thought they would give a nice contrast. I chose to do the stripe in the Madeleine color before using Fluoro Morganite for the twisted rib. I tried to use whatever colors would look nice next to the adjacent sections, while also picking a yarn that I thought would work well with the stitch pattern.
I used the As If Cashmerino color as a background for the fluffy slip stitch dots in White Peach. I love how this section looked; the melted baby suri is so plush and nice. Then I knit a stripe in the Electric Berry color, and moved into my first real brioche section using the Baby Rose as the foreground and the Fluoro Morganite as the background.
Everything was looking a little bright so I knit the next section in the Madeleine color to anchor the shawl. I really liked how that turned out. I knit the next stripe in As If before moving on to the slip stitch bricks using White Peach as the background and the Electric Berry as the foreground/brick.
I had used the melted baby suri in my original combination shawl as well, and thought the thick yarn really framed the brick section nicely. I made some small little changes compared to the first shawl in this section so that the bricks lined up a little better.
For my next section of brioche, I used the As If as the foreground and Baby Rose as the background. I also had a Kumo version of the As If color that I wanted to use, but I wasn’t finding the right place yet. I worked my notes directly from my iPad and made some minor updates along the way.
In my first shawl, I felt like I increased too quickly on one of the stripes so I planned to make an adjustment with this Pretty In Pink Combination Shawl. As I was looking over my notes and comparing to my original shawl, I could see that my notes were different from what I actually knit. I really felt like my knitting had improved at that point because I could read my work and see what kinds of increases I’d done in the original shawl.
I decided to copy the increases I had made in the original shawl, knowing it would create that same crescent shape. The fluffy garter section in White Peach was really fun to knit as a break from the brioche; it looks like a cloud.
In the next slipped stitch dots section, I used the Madeleine held double so that the Baby Rose could really pop. I thought the fabric looked a lot prettier and matched the neighboring melted baby suri texture a little better.
I was so in love with the colors and how everything looked at this point. I knit a small garter stripe and started the next brioche section using Fluoro Morganite as the foreground and As If as the background. I decided to knit a few more rows of this final brioche section to match the other brioche sections. These rows of brioche were so long and ate up a lot of yarn.
Between all the brioche and holding some yarn double, my yarn was starting to run out. I was having flashbacks to running out of basically all my colors in the Aurora Cabin Shawl. I made a spreadsheet so I could calculate how many yards of yarn that each row needed and how many yards I had remaining for each color.
It takes out a lot of the stress of ‘yarn chicken’ when you actually know exactly how much yarn you have/need. But most of my colors were too low to do complete sections/stripes so I had to improvise a little vs the original shawl. I knit a stripe of the White Peach and then knit the 18 crescents in the As If Kumo.
I only had enough yarn to knit a few stripes in the border, and one final stripe in the White Peach before moving on to the Electric Berry I-cord.
WASHING + BLOCKING
With so many pinks in this Pretty In Pink shawl, I was worried that the pinks would bleed into the lighter colors and ruin the contrast. I washed the shawl in cold water only (no soaps) and even still there was a lot of pink left in the tub.
I gently squeezed out any excess water and rolled the shawl in a beach towel. I laid out the shawl on my blocking mats and arranged it flat to dry. Luckily, I didn’t notice any color transfer/staining from the pinks in the shawl.
PRETTY IN PINK FINAL THOUGHTS
I enjoyed revisiting my old notes to see if I could recreate this shawl. I think the pinks and purples look super pretty and I had a lot of fun knitting this shawl. I also feel like the colors help to balance the weight of the different sections in the shawl.
Even though my Pretty In Pink border is smaller, the shawl overall is basically the same size as my original combination shawl because I had a larger final brioche section. This is definitely a “shlanket” size shawl.
Throughout this Pretty In Pink shawl, I knit a selvege edge at each end, and I think the finish looks a lot nicer. I made those changes to the brick section, and some changes to how I did the increases at the end. I feel really accomplished that I could recreate this shawl, and I’m also proud that I was able to read the different stitch increases in my original shawl. This is definitely one of my favorite knits!
Check out my Ravelry to see more pictures of this Pretty In Pink Combination Shawl or to take a look at the other projects I’m working on.
