Maze and Blue

This shawl provides the ultimate in flexibility for any two skeins of yarn you want to combine. It works for any weight of yarn and any gauge you like; just get a blocked fabric you like with the yarn you want to use. When you’re just about out of your main color, add a border and you’re done!

Inspired by the plastic maze toys I often received as birthday party favors as a child, this shawl combines typical shaping for a crescent shape with short rows to give you a shawl that’s closer to a half circle after blocking. The technique used for the contrast color stripes is what I call short-row intarsia -- intarsia that is done in such a way that you do not need to have small bobbins or yarn butterflies and there is no twisting of strands. You will have two skeins of yarn attached to your work at any given time and use some strategically placed short rows to achieve this effect.

To knit this pattern, you need to know how to:

• do a provisional cast on (any method),
• pick up stitches along a garter edge,
• increase using m1/backward loop, and
• work short rows (any method).

The sample shown in the pattern was knit using two colors of fingering weight yarn. Nearly all of the main color and 80% of the contrast color was used.

This pattern has been test knit and professionally tech edited.

Yarn weight/requirements: any weight, any amount of yarn; shown in fingering weight - Molly Girl Yarns Honky Tonk Lite (75% Merino/25% Ingeo (corn); 450 yds./411 m per 3.5 oz./100 g skein) in Under the Table and Dreaming and House of the Rising Sun
Gauge: any gauge -- just get a fabric density you like!
Needles: any size that gives you your desired gauge
Size: completely customizable