A trip to New Hampshire is planned – finally. With all this Covid stuff, New Englanders do not want visitors! I have not visited my children for over two years at this point. So it’s time.

I won’t be traveling in deep winter, but early Spring. It could still be cold and I suddenly thought about packing frugally for cold weather. Although I have loads of hand knits, most are bulky and I will only take one medium sized suitcase.

For this reason I decided to knit a smallish neck wrap.

I like the shape of crescent shawls. I wanted something not as big as a true scarf, and I wanted it to be useful and warm. Something I could just wrap around my neck on walks.

I’ve knit quite a few shawls and wraps, but few have been crescent shaped. My pattern collection has built up over the past couple of years and I began to dig through. It’s been a year of conserving and using up what I have, including yarn.

The Pattern is “Railings”, by Janina Kallio of Woolenberry

Railings is a pattern I had purchased and printed out a while ago, but never knit. To be sure of the shape, I looked it up on Ravelry and read the comments of other knitters. Many said it ended up too small, so I have added a few more rows.

First thing to consider, after the pattern was chosen, was color. I didn’t want sock yarn because I want this wrap to be warm. It also had to be soft. Digging through my stash, I found a ball of Anzula in dark gray. It is soft and wonderful and has 10% cashmere. To add some fuzziness, I made stripes of Anzula and mohair held together. White mohair would not have been my preferred choice, but it’s what I had.

I might run out of yarn, but I have more dark balls to use up. I’m not really concerned with color matching, just a warm and comfy end product.

The plan is to have this shawl wrap around my neck with the ends hanging down in front. *Update: photo above shows it wrapped and tied twice in front. I think it is the perfect size. The other thing I’d like to knit before my trip is a pair of fingerless mitts.

Woolenberry Patterns – She Does Shawls

When I think of Woolenberry, I think shawls. She is a good designer to follow if you are a bit of a beginner and want knitting practice. She offers a nice variety of fairly easy patterns which are easy to follow. She may also have more difficult patterns as I am not familiar with all she offers.

I have knit her Dewdrops shawl. It was an easy knit and is triangle shaped.