Big Braid Shawl

Test Knitting for PremKnits

I’m a big fan of Casey, and her work with PremKnits.  She offers beautiful color ways in her yarns and her patterns are always eye designs that allow subtle details to really pop.  She’s got so many fun patterns and I have to admit, I’ve been eyeing a few myself.  Recently Casey put out a call for test knitters, needed for her big braid shawl – one of the patterns that I’ve had my eye on.  I jumped at the opportunity, and then went back and checked the requirements to be sure that I could help her out (phew, I was safe!).  A day later, I got the email that thanked me for helping! Woohoo! Fiber friends!  My inner nerd was just shining.

You can check out her instagram here.

Casey sent the pattern, along with some tips and what she’d like from us to improve the pattern details and notations in return and I was off to the yarn store!  I haven’t knitted with chunky or bulky yarn in a while, so I didn’t have anything in my stash that would work.  Shocking, I know.  Picking a yarn and color for this shawl was tough, not because it was hard to find a yarn that I liked, but because there were about 5 solid competing options.  I might have made the employees a bit nervous the way I was furiously going from one yarn, to another and then back again.  But I was able to select a finalist (and of course a backup yarn just in case it didn’t work out, or I wanted to you know, make a second big braid shawl).  I selected Bernat’s Roving Yarn in Raspberry for a couple of reasons.  1. It was affordable and after just buying a house, new appliances, and a work vehicle, I needed something affordable.  2. The color is rich and deep.  The Big Braid Shawl typically calls for a rainbow or multicolored yarn, but I was just drawn to this one color.  (Maybe it was because I just couldn’t narrow down some of the multicolored options – there were so many great ones!).  And 3. Roving was something that I hadn’t worked with in a while, so why not switch it up for a new pattern?

Test Knitting The Big Braid Shawl

First, I’d like to share my thoughts on her pattern and the instructions.  It can be hard to take something that you have created, and translate it for someone who is seeing this project or maybe some of the techniques for the first time.  We’ve all had our fair share of patterns that we’d like to attempt and then end up tossing them aside because they just are not clear enough.  This is NOT the case with patterns from Prem Knits.  Her patterns are clear and concise, written out well enough to understand, without too much of the real estate being chewed up by images and other elements that don’t matter.

Also, I very much like how, in this pattern, she has set it up so that it flows well – combining my two loves of knitting and yoga.  The skills and elements are defined and broken down into two sections that the knitter repeats until the piece is long enough or large enough to meet their desire.  So there is room to customize the pattern as you need, and its easy to do it.

By now you can probably tell that I very much enjoyed this test knit process and cannot wait to see what some of the other knitters have done!!

PS A smidge upset that the one skein was a different dye lot – and I was knitting at night, in a cabin, by the fire, so I didn’t notice…But Murphy still approves!  We’ll post a link to the pattern as soon as it’s live!