What to do when the fabric becomes unwieldy.

I am happily working on my Aero shawl, and have arrived once again at the section of the wing that has me working with 4 strands at a time. The shawl is worked in 3 pieces, 2 of which are “wings” and one is a centre triangle that joins the wings together in the end.

For the first wing, I just struggled along, having the 4 strands of worsted weight yarn catch on the hanging piece of heavy fabric, and twist and tangle and snag. At this point, the wing is about 70cm, or 28″, long. I wasn’t about to knit it standing up, so it was a bit of a struggle. The knitting wasn’t hard, it was the juggling.

This time, I got smart. I borrowed a technique from quilting, rolled up most of the fabric, and secured it by basting it with some scrap fingering yarn. I thought of clipping it with those biting kind of hair clips, but didn’t want the teeth to snag on the sts. This does make the piece feel a bit heavier than it did before, because it is a parallelogram and therefor one edge is “longer” than the other, but it will save a lot of headaches. I am hoping to be finished this shawl before we leave town on Friday, but there are still 44 rows to go on Wing #2, plus section 3, so I shouldn’t hold my breath.

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