Roundabout Shawl

Garter stitch is smooth and meditative to work and produces a soft, reversible fabric that doesn’t curl; and its simplicity will allow the colors and textures of your precious handspun to take the spotlight.

Each two-row ridge of garter stitch is equal to one stitch in width, leading to all sorts of right-angled and mitered possibilities that don’t require a lot of counting once you get some stitch markers in place. This shawl is a result of playing with those possibilities and the goal of fitting a flat piece of knitting around a three-dimensional body. Designer Jennifer Miller Comstock named it the Roundabout, after the three right-angled turns it makes as it wraps around the wearer’s shoulders.

This top-down shawl can be worked successfully as a scarf or wrap if you have a smaller yarn quantity. Just use the yarn you have, knit until you have used almost all of it, and then bind off. The shape of the Roundabout lends itself well to self-striping or gradient yarns such as the one I used here, and it would be really fun as a stash-busting, scrappy project!

Jennifer Miller Comstock earned degrees in fiber arts and architecture from the University of Washington, both of which inform her current work as a fiber artist. She still lives and works in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, where it is (delightfully) sweater weather all year. Find Jennifer, along with more of her projects and patterns, as otterness on Ravelry.

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