I step outside first thing in the morning ready to be greeted by chirping birds and cool air. Instead I’m hit with a wall of humidity and an already scorching sun. For many people, summer is all about fun in the sun. For me, it’s more like sunburn and heatstroke, I was not made for the heat. Don’t get me wrong, I love farmers markets and afternoons by the pool, but after a few days of high temps and humidity, I’m already looking forward to fall.
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The Inspiration
Summer crochet makes me think of swimsuit cover ups, lacy tops, and beach bags. I’m totally feeling these summer patterns in April, May and even June, but come July and August and I crave making a shawl like most people crave ice cream in, well, July and August – ha ha!
The open, lacy textures that define summer crochet always inspire me to design the perfect fall crochet shawl. While I have a “tall person personality”, I am in fact quite short. At 5’3” I get absolutely buried in large, dense, traditional triangle shawls. For someone like me – short, curvy, and texture obsessed – a more unique shape and open fabric fits me much better.
When my shawl craving hit this year, I knew I wanted to check all those boxes and make myself a shawl that I would love to wear all the time! Having just finished up my Bayla Beach Bag, I was deep in my obsession with the V stitch as well and knew that stitch definitely needed to be a part of my shawl. I added a couple other favorite texture stitches, threw in some shells for contrast and was on my way to the perfect shawl…until I suddenly wasn’t!
I could see the shape of the shawl I wanted so clearly in my mind that I could almost feel it wrapping around me. While the texture of the shawl came easily, creating the shape I envisioned did not. I stitched, and stitched, and stitched! I held up my tiny shawl, squinted at it and tried to convince myself that it would end up being the shape I wanted. Then I stitched some more, had a moment of honesty with myself and realized it was just not working. I repeated this process at least 7 more times – will I ever learn to trust my gut right away? Apparently not! The upside is that I learned a lot about shaping! But still hadn’t come up with the perfect shape.
It would be such a great story of triumph if I could tell you that I persevered and finally came to create the prefect fall crochet shawl I had envisioned in my mind! That, however, is not the case. Thankfully, I found a shape that is even better than the one I had envisioned! The V shape and curving ends of the Levana Shawl not only look a little bit like the V stitches in the shawl, but also; it wraps so wonderfully around my neck and shoulders without being super long or sliding around too much! It was not what I had in mind, but I am incredibly thrilled with it!
A Good Sport
One of my very favorite things that brings me the most joy about crafting, is creating unique color combinations. When I stepped into my local yarn shop I knew that I wanted something truly special and bold for this shawl.
First, I must say that I am so incredibly blessed to have such an amazing local yarn shop. It is truly an inspiration just to wander around and see all the beautiful colors and textures of the beautiful and squishy yarn. As I wandered around in search for the perfect yarn, I was drawn to a skein of deep teal-y, green, which is a color that makes me swoon every time I see it! Sitting close by was the most gorgeous, bold chartreuse. Unfortunately, I had another problem. When I picked up the skeins they were not the fingering weight yarn I was hoping for, they were sport weight. When I asked the shop owner if she had those colors in fingering weight yarn, the answer was no – sigh. So I had a decision to make, use the colors I was absolutely obsessed with or choose a completely different yarn. Obviously, you know how this story ends, and I went ahead with the sport weight yarn.
One of the reasons I was hesitant to use sport weight yarn was because I know fingering weight yarn is more common. If you have some fingering weight yarn in your stash that you’re absolutely in love with, I’ve got you covered! While my shawl was in testing, I made a second shawl right along with my testers, but in fingering weight yarn! Scroll down to see how it turned out and get tips on how to modify your own shawl into a fingering weight shawl!
The Yarn
I have a yarn soulmate, and she doesn’t even know it. Almost every single color that Knitted Wit dyes speaks to my soul! I was not the least bit surprised when I picked up my skeins to find that they were dyed by Knitted Wit. Their bold and saturated colors are stunning and always fun to play with! I bought a whole bunch of mini skeins a while back that I have no idea what I’m going to do with yet just because I needed all the colors!
My yarn is Knitted Witt Sport and is 100% superwash Merino wool. Each hank has 325 yds/100g. You already know that I’m obsessed with all the colors of this yarn, but the two I chose for my shawl are Carpenter Bee, that dreamy teal-green color. The stunning chartreuse is called Golden Delicious. While in theory, superwash Merino can be machine washed, the label recommends, and I agree, to hand wash your makes and lay them flat to dry.
There are, of course, so many gorgeous yarns out there and you are welcome to substitute any you like. The awesome thing about a shawl is that it’s much more forgiving with yarn substitution. If you’d like to learn more about substituting yarn, I have a whole post you can read here! I do think that the Lavana Shawl benefits greatly from blocking. It really opens up the stitch texture and defines the shape of the shawl nicely. So, I would recommend you choose a yarn that you are able to block; and block your shawl in the appropriate manner for the fiber content of your yarn.
Other Supplies
The rest of the supply list is pretty small. The only other things you really need are a US H 5.0 mm hook, a tapestry needle (these are my favorites) and scissors (aren’t these beautiful?). I always recommend you check your hook carefully and look for the millimeters rather than a letter label. While US H hooks are pretty standard, there can be some discrepancies between companies as to how they label their hook sizes.
I fell in love with and always recommend Furls crochet hooks. Their Alpha Series is my absolute favorite hook line. It’s stunning and fits so well in my smaller hands. It is one of their pricier hooks, but well worth the splurge. If you’re looking to dip your toes into Furls hooks, I love their wooden Streamline hooks too. Because of their more affordable price, I have a lot of these hooks and use them regularly. They fit nicely in my hands too, are so comfortable to work with, and glide nicely through yarn!
During the summer I’ve been taking my yarn on the go a lot more than I did while the boys were in school. I’m a bit nervous about taking my wooden hooks to the park so I ordered a set of metal hooks at the beginning of the summer to take on the go. I’ve really been enjoying my Tulip hook set. They’re super smooth, with a really comfortable grip. I usually work with wooden hooks, but find that metal hooks glide really nicely through cotton and other plant fiber yarns. I bought a whole set of Tulip hooks and am a bit surprised that I’ve used almost all of them. Initially I worried the more narrow handle might cause hand pain, but they glide so easily through the yarn, they’ve been very comfortable to use!
The Pattern
The Levana Shawl pattern is available on Ravelry and Etsy for purchase. If you’re reading this between July 22nd, 2022 and July 27th, 2022 you can use the code 20SHAWL to save 20% on Ravelry or Etsy. If you’d like to get the best discounts on all my new patterns, join my email list here!
The Levana Shawl is a tier 3 pattern. Tier 3 patterns are designed to let your skills shine through patterns with a mix of intermediate stitches! These patterns include a variety of sized projects that combine intermediate stitches and design elements to the new stitches or skills learned in a Tier 1 and 2 patterns. These patterns will help you show off your skills.
Check out the Tier 1 and 2 patterns for the stitches used in the Levana Shawl below.
Read more about my tiered pattern system here!
A HUGE ***thank you*** to my amazing testers! They all did such beautiful work! This pattern was tested and tech edited to be as clear as possible. Pattern testers are an important part of the publishing process. I appreciate the time and attention they give! Thank you to my wonderful tech editor Michelle Muskett of Tales of Knots whose attention to detail makes every pattern better!
Pin the Shawl for later
Can’t Stop Won’t Stop
It’s not very often I make multiples of a pattern I write, or any pattern for that matter! But, I was both so in love with my Levana Shawl and so curious how it would work up in fingering weight yarn, I knew that I needed to make another one!
I must be truly drawn to these colors because I already had two skeins of a gorgeous cool gray yarn with the exact same color of teal, green and chartreuse speckled throughout! I knew that it was going to be the perfect yarn to try my modification! While sport weight and fingering weight yarn can sometimes be a fairly similar weight, the Knitted Wit sport yarn and the KnitSmith fingering weight yarn I had were definitely different weights.
I did a quick swatch and found that going up one hook size got me about the same gauge as my sport weight yarn. I dove right in stitching up my Levana Shawl in one color and with fingering weight yarn.
One of the things I was most curious about was how much yardage I would need of fingering weight yarn. Thankfully, the Levana Shawl takes about 600 yards of yarn and I had well over 800 yards of my fingering weight yarn, so I knew I had plenty. I started by working my shawl as written, right up to the final row, just to see how many yards it would take.
After I weighed my shawl and figured out how many yards I had used, I ripped back my last two rows and ventured to see how big I could make my shawl with the extra yarn! I ended up getting a full repeat of my blue section and an entire additional green section in my fingering weight shawl. Which made it significantly bigger! Thankfully, with the super lightweight fabric the fingering weight yarn creates it is still a very comfortable shawl to wear on my more petite frame. It also has the most amazing drape!
If you’d like to check out my process for modifying my Levana Shawl, check out my YouTube video below. You can also see my Ravelry project for all the details on how many yards I used in the final measurements of my shawl!
More Patterns with This Stitch Combination
This quick and fun cozy features working in the 3rd loop and is great for practicing that
Stitch! Worked in bulky weight yarn it is perfect for selling at craft shows and makes great gifts!
perfect your V stitch in this fun, customizable wall hanging! Fun and relaxing, this pattern comes in three sizes, can be worked up with scraps of yarn and makes a fun, unique gift!
ready for all your summer adventures, this beautiful bag features a sturdy bottom, top and handles to make it useful and comfortable to use. The V stitch center helps it work up quickly and adds visual interest.
All of these links connect to my Ravelry shop, but if you prefer Etsy, you can find a link to my Etsy shop here!
Read more about my tiered pattern system here!
