The Go Go Dynamo shawl was the 2024 Westknits Mystery Knit Along (MKAL) design. It calls for two contrasting colors and an optional lace weight mohair color to create a semi-circular shawl with stripes, bubbles, brioche, and more. This shawl was so much fun to knit! Keep reading for my experience knitting the Go Go Dynamo shawl.
I didn’t participate in the MKAL, but I really liked seeing the design unfold each week. It was so cool how the shawl started in the middle and then knit out from both ends. I knew I wanted to knit this shawl! So when I was done knitting my rainbow honeycomb brioche blanket, I started planning for my Go Go Dynamo.
YARN
I thought a lot about what colors I wanted to use. The Go Go Dynamo by Stephen West calls for two colors, and an optional mohair dare color pop or similar color. I looked at the kits offered and the project pages of the finished shawls to get some color inspiration.
It almost seemed harder to pick a two-color palette than shawls with 5 colors. I looked through my stash and selected a fluffy Kumo skein from La Bien Aimee. It’s this super hot pink skein, and I tried to build off that. I only have single skein colors in my stash, and this shawl calls for two skeins in each color. So I searched online to find some colors I thought would work with my hot pink.
I ordered two colors from Hedgehog Fibres that I thought would look good with the hot pink. Here’s the palette I selected:
I had used this Harajuku color in a sweater I’d knit for my niece before. I knew it would look great with the As If color which I’ve used in a few projects. The Minty was more of a mystery when I ordered. I wasn’t sure if it would lean more blue or green since I couldn’t find the color in any other Ravelry projects. But it’s a true turquoise blue and looks really nice with the other colors.
Color Planning
I was excited to start knitting, but I wanted to plan out how my colors would work together. I put a black & white filter over my yarn and there wasn’t much contrast between the two shades. Then I put a picture of the finished shawl on my iPad and colored over it with my color palette.
I really liked experimenting with the different options and even making some color adjustments. I roughly assigned the Minty as MC, Harajuku as CC, and As If as an alternate MC and CC.
GO GO DYNAMO SHAWL
Even though I didn’t knit my shawl during the MKAL, I purchased the pattern before all the weekly clues had been consolidated into a single pdf/final pattern. So although I was aware of the final design, I got to experience the individual clues as if I’d done the MKAL.
Clue 1
Semi-Circles
I cast on my first of three semi-circles with my US 4 needles on a 14″ cable. It was fun to get started on a new project. I was loving how the blue and pink were looking knit up together. Instead of transferring my semi-circle onto waste yarn, I just left it on its cable and transferred my needles to work the next semi-circle.
For my second and third semi-circles, I used 22″ cables and also left them on their own cables instead of using waste yarn. I really like having the Chiaogoo interchangeable needles because I can make any combination of needles/cables that I need. I can easily move between projects by making some quick swaps.
TIP: when leaving a project on a cable only, use a safety pin to join the cable through the lifeline/tightening key hole. This keeps your stitches safe while you work on other projects.
Garter Stripes
For these wedges connecting the semi-circles together, I used my As If as the MC. I wasn’t sure where the pattern wanted me to start picking up stitches, so I referenced the linked tutorial video. Usually these weekly clue releases don’t have pictures in the pattern to prevent spoilers, but I’m sure this would be clear in the final pattern pdf.
I added a needle to my first semi-circle and cast on the new stitches. I loved using the fluffy Kumo in this section. It’s so soft and I was happy to have another color in the rotation. I added a needle to my 50″ cable and knit through this section. Also, since I had a new MC, I didn’t need to follow the pattern directions for using a stitch marker. I could see which stitches to join because they were different colors.
To carry the yarn while knitting the stripes, I wrapped the yarn around the other color after moving the yarn to the back –“RS: sl1wyif, move yarn to back”. This kept it clean and nice in the back, and easy to manage.
No Waste Yarn
At the end of the first wedge, the pattern has you move those live stitches to waste yarn. I think this may be a direction just for the weekly MKAL clues. Knowing where the shawl was headed, I chose to instead keep my new wedge stitches on my 50″ cable. I also transferred the middle 35 stitches of semi-circle 1. Then I placed a stitch marker and transferred the final 30 stitches from semi-circle 1 onto my left needle with the 50″ cable, and moved on to the next wedge instructions. The removable stitch marker helped me isolate my 30 working stitches from the 35 middle stitches.
As I completed each wedge of garter stripes, I moved my 50″ cable through all of the live stitches so that by the end of the final wedge, all my stitches were all mounted and ready to begin the Bubbles section.
Bubbles
I followed the color directions for the bubbles section. I was happy to be working all on one cable for the entire row. To ensure I got the correct stitch, I traced my right needle along the column for the drop/knit below stitch
Then I would use my finger to help open up the dropped stitches. And to make sure I got a crispy bubble, I cinched the next few knitted stitches a little tighter.
Here’s a look at the WS of my bubbles section:
Clue 2
There are two options for this clue — brioche or eyelets. I scrolled through the pattern and decided on brioche. I love brioche so I was excited to knit it in this pattern.
Brioche
This section suggests a Mohair Dare as the CC color which I definitely wanted to do. I thought my Minty (MC) would look nice with As If as the CC.
It was fun to work the brioche. I think the Minty looks really crisp on a fluffy bed of hot pink As If.
Brioche + Bubbles repeat
I enjoyed knitting the brioche and bubble section repeats. I think the As If as the CC in the brioche section sort of looks like a new purple color. It’s a nice surprise and gives some extra dimension.
The bubbles section looks nice and really frames this block in the pattern. But after so many bubble rows, I was looking forward to knitting something new. I left the Minty color attached, but wrapped in a rubber band while I moved on to my next section.
Clue 4
I decided that I wanted to skip to clue 4 before starting clue 3. I wanted to sort of close up the top end of the shawl first so that I could better decide what colors I wanted to use for the short row wedges (section 8). Plus, I was looking forward to working some shorter/faster rows.
I read through the pattern for section 9 which includes tiny bobbles and slip stitch triangles. I decided to make some color swaps for these sections to accommodate more of the kumo I wanted.
Tiny Bobbles
I made Harajuku my MC and As If as the CC in this section. I thought that having fluffy little bobbles would be nice. Then I could use Minty and Harajuku together in the slip stitch triangle section to keep the stitch definition crisp.
I started out watching the Clue 4 video to see where to pick up stitches. I’m familiar with picking up stitches from other Westknits patterns and the selvedge edge makes it really clear. I used my 30″ cable and the US4 needles to pick up my stitches.
When I got to the first WS row of the actual tiny bobbles, I struggled to k3togtbl especially because the silky kumo isn’t very elastic. It took me at least twice the time just to get through the row. I think it was just the yo stitch from the kyok pulling on the other two stitches, making it really tight to do the k3togtbl.
To help with this issue, on subsequent RS bobble rows I was a lot looser with the kyok. This same thing could have been accomplished by swapping up a needle size. But by just being looser on my RS row, it was so much easier to k3togtbl. The bobbles are slightly bigger, but they are still super pretty and were much easier to knit.
Slip Stitch Triangles
In this section, I used Minty as the CC and Harajuku as the MC. I followed the pattern as written and I really enjoyed how the rows were getting shorter and shorter. I love how the design looks and I was glad I used my fingering yarns for the clear stitch definition.
Repeats + Decreases
I repeated the tiny bobbles and slip stitch triangles sections, decreasing as directed. Because my k2tog are usually tighter than the rest of my knitting, I was a little looser on all k2tog until the final decreases. During the final rows of decreases, I knit my normal tension/tightness. I’m glad I was more relaxed with the other decreases throughout because the fabric in these sections seemed sufficiently relaxed and not tight/puckering. Although any tightness would probably block out. At this point, the only puckering I was seeing was along the first semi-circles/garter stripes section.
This is where I paused on Clue 4 because the second part (Wavy Border) requires that I do the Triangle Wedges from Clue 3 first.
Clue 3
I was looking forward to starting these cute wedges in section 8. At first I thought to use the As If for some fluffy pops, but ultimately decided that the kumo would look better in the wavy border. So I used my Minty (MC) and Harajuku (CC) as written in the pattern.
I already had my Minty color attached so I already knew where to begin picking up stitches for the first wedge. By the end of the first “slice” of the wedge, it says to close the short row gaps while knitting through the row. I was familiar with this from knitting the Marled Magic Sweater and I continued through the pattern.
These wedges were very slow for me. Carrying the yarns along in the icord edging, and moving the stitch marker made these wedges a slog to knit.
Carrying Yarn Tips
I wanted to make a callout about carrying the non-working color in the icord edge. First, to do this is super simple, you just cross your working yarn underneath the other color to “catch” it as you go to knit the first three stitches of the row. So it’s basically a little twist, and I did it for all three icord stitches at the beginning of the row.
These triangle wedges are made up of three “slices”. The MC wedge’s base is along the bottom of the shawl, so every RS row begins with the icord edge. So for the MC wedges, I made the little twists to carry along my CC on every RS row. It was slow, but I did get faster because of my second tip: use a yarn cozy or rubber band to secure your non-working yarn. You can more easily achieve that twist you need because your yarn isn’t getting all tangled with the other color. I mostly knit sitting on my sofa, and it was easy for me to just lift one ball over/under my working yarn to get the twist I needed for all three icord stitches. The CC wedges were a lot faster because the icord stitches aren’t worked as frequently.
My third callout is to slightly tug on the carried yarn color before moving on to work the next wedge because if there’s too much slack it’ll show through the icord. I learned this the hard way — luckily my colors aren’t super high contrast and it doesn’t look too noticeable to me. Just something to be aware of. Midway through my wedges, I made the adjustment — I pulled the non-working color’s slack and then tugged back on the icord to make sure it wasn’t too tight before beginning the next wedge — and it looks cleaner.
Consolidated Pattern
I knit through ~10 wedges (total) when the consolidated Go Go Dynamo pattern was released. This pattern combined all of the individually released clues from the MKAL into one complete pattern pdf. I downloaded the new pattern and saw that this section 8 had been reorganized. There was now a callout about how to close the short row gaps on the WS and the RS, and the repeats were individually written out (instead of the pattern saying “repeat last 2 rows 3 more times”).
Closing the Gaps
I watched the videos linked in the pattern for closing the short row gaps and was a little sad to see I had been closing the gaps on the WS incorrectly. I thought what I had knit so far looked fine; I wasn’t going to rip it back, but the correct way looks way better.
To close the gaps on the RS with MC:
To close the gaps on the WS with CC:
The video tutorial linked in the pattern has time stamps to watch for each.
Repeat Rows
The new consolidated pattern individually wrote out each direction for the repeat rows instead of just saying to “repeat 3 more times”. This really helped me a ton because I wrote in the specific number of stitches to knit to for each row, so that I didn’t have to bother with placing and removing the stitch marker.
So for example, on Rows 17 & 18:
Row 17 (RS): K12. Turn to work WS.
Row 18 (WS): K9, sl3wyif.
This made it so I could zoom through each row so much faster. I still was carrying my yarns in the icord, but not having to deal with the stitch marker saved a lot of time. And as I continued to knit without the stitch marker, I was able to read my work better so I could work a little more quickly.
Short Row Wedges
Finally my short row triangle wedges were complete! I really love how they turned out, but they were not the most fun to knit. Still I think this section really makes the Go Go Dynamo look extra special. I’m happy I chose to carry the yarns along the entire border. Even though it was slow going (especially for the MC wedge), I didn’t have to think about weaving in any extra ends.
Wavy Border
Since I was now working with the finalized pattern, I just moved on to section 10 for the Wavy Border because had I completed the Tiny Bobbles/Slip Stitch section earlier.
The wavy border is written as an optional section, but I wanted to tie everything together with a little more kumo fluff. I really enjoyed this section, especially coming from just working the wedges. Long knit or purl rows are my favorite. In this section, Harajuku was my CC and I used As If as the MC.
To make the border wavy, there is one row with k2tog and yo. I tried to really pay attention on this row since it’s important for the waves to all line up. I was glad I had no issues and it helped that I was able to kind of understand the pattern and read my work.
Here’s how I thought of it: as you are knitting Row 9 of the border pattern repeat, try to look below to the wedges section. As you knit towards and away from the 3 CC icord stitches of the CC wedge, you are decreasing (k2tog). And as you knit above the MC wedge, you are increasing (yo). So the wavy border will scrunch in at the CC wedge’s point, and the expand along the MC wedge’s base. Hopefully that helps you read your work a little easier. I also placed a stitch marker after the pattern repeat every hundred stitches or so. And because this pattern is repeated exactly on every row 9, the stitch markers I placed always lined up.
ICord Bind Off + Blocking
I bound off with the CC as written and I was so happy with my finished shawl. The Go Go Dynamo was so much fun to knit and it looks so pretty.
I soaked my shawl in some cool, soapy water for ~15 minutes while I set up my blocking mats. Then I gently squeezed out the water from my shawl and laid it out on a towel. I rolled up the towel to help remove any excess water and then I set the shawl out on my blocking mats.
Any puckering I had noticed around the semi-circles and the striped wedges had loosened just from soaking in the water. I placed pins in the shawl to help shape it, starting along the top edge. As I started moving to the bottom to pin the wavy border, I noticed some pulling in the semi-circle section. I didn’t want to block so aggressively that the semi-circles were all stretched, but I wanted to exaggerate the wavy border. So I ended up placing a row of pins after the semi-circles to protect them from stretching too much and also allowing me to exaggerate the knitting between them and the border.
Once my shawl was dry, I went through to weave in the ends and trim the long tails.
Final Thoughts
I love my Go Go Dynamo shawl. The design and construction is so creative; it was exciting to knit. I also am really happy with my yarn colors. The Minty color started out as my intended MC, but it ended up being more of an accent color with my double pinks. I love the As If kumo — not only is the color striking, the texture is so soft and special.
This pattern was really inspiring and I’m happy I was able to knit it. Check out my Ravelry to see my other projects or what I’m working on next!
