The Old Shale pattern, nowadays better known as Feather and Fan, is a famous and well-known old Shetland pattern with deep scallops.
It comes in many variations and one can play around a lot with it.
I have used this Feather and Fan pattern as a base in several of my designs and I simply love how easy it is.
Feather and Fan in detail
The basic pattern of Feather and Fan is a 4 row repeat, in which you work with 18 stitches:
Row 1) Knit
Row 2) Purl
Row 3) (k2tog) 3x, (yo, k1) 6x, (k2tog) 3x
Row 4) knit
Repeat row 1 to row 4.
When you do this 4 row pattern repeat, at the start your piece will look like this:
See how nicely it scallops? I love it.
But when you bind off, at the end, your piece will look like this:
Don’t ask my why. It just does that.
At first I had no problems with that. I have made many scarves like this and it didn’t bother me at all.
Nowadays, it does bother me. I don’t find these aesthetics pleasing anymore and I want both ends of my scarf looking exactly the same!
Feather and Fan with multiple of 3
For the Feather and Fan scarf I am working on right now, I am using two different balls of yarn: Lace Merino Silk by Karabella, and Kidsilk Haze by Rowan.
For needles, I am using 24″ circular Addi Turbo Lace Needles. They are less slippery than the regular addis, and I love how the ends are so pointy. Perfect for lace!
The Feather and Fan shawl that I am working on right now has more scallops.
I casted on those 18 stitches, with multiple of 3. So this means 18×3=54 stitches.
I also throw 2 more side stitches in the mix so all in all, at the start of this pattern I will instruct to cast on 56 stitches.
And besides that, I am altering the traditional Feather and Fan pattern a tad little bit, but I will talk about that in my next post.
I specifically want the two sides of my scarf to look exactly the same.
To achieve this, I am taking my first two balls and knit the pattern up until I run out of yarn:
I put that piece aside without casting off, and start a new piece exactly like it with two fresh balls of yarn:
After I finish my second half, I will join the two pieces together using a technique called “three needle bind off”.
In my next blog post, I will show you how to do that.
Okay, that’s it for now!
Thanks so much for reading and until the next entry!