Recently off The Needles… Find Your Fade by Drea Renee Knits

Back at Christmas 2016, I discovered the Find Your Fade pattern by Andrea Mowry (Drea Renee Knits). I was determined to use wool I already had with that attempt so I was using 4mm needles and DK wool even though the pattern was written for 3.5mm needles and 4 ply wool. I would start over and over again but would never quite get it right. In the end, I put it away and got on with other projects (mainly lots of baby blankets with assistance from Mum!)

Having finished the project I took away with me on holiday in November, I was then twiddling my thumbs. What was I going to do the rest of the week? We had limited to no internet connection and once Jaxon was in bed we needed to keep the noise down and the lights dimmed. 

Well, I decided while I wasn’t working and had time to concentrate I’d try this pattern again. It genuinely couldn’t be that hard given the number of pictures I’d seen on Instagram and photos on Ravelry.

LET’S DO THIS THING!

The first flaw in the plan was that I didn’t have the right size knitting needles. The ones I had with me for my other project were far too big. We were planning on going to Norwich/Norfolk so I looked up knitting shops there. Various popped up around the county but Norfolk Yarn was the one that I thought we’d stop by. It’s right near the

When we started a pattern I had found on Ravelry. Did it work? No. Off the needles, it came and the pattern collected virtual dust in my Ravelry.

I decided that minus the first two balls that I had bought while we were away. The rest of the shawl would be knitted from stash. This meant that some of the wool would be 4Ply and some would be DK. I’m not entirely sure this method worked exactly but in the grand scheme, I’m not sure you can entirely tell the difference.

Project Specs

Pattern: Find Your Fade by Drea Renee Knits
Pattern Source: Ravelry here:
Yarn: the lilac and white are by Yarn Stories. There’s two Noro in the middle too. The rest are from stash so I’m not 100% sure.
Date Started: November 2017
Date Finished: January 2018
Modifications: I say None but actually a lot of the wool choices don’t match the pattern!
Final Measurements: big! Longer than my wing span for sure!

And now for the final product…

Now I’m sure when it was designed it was supposed to be more of a graduated fade or something a bit more complimentary. However, I was working on using what I had in stash along with learning the skills for the pattern. This is why it looks like a painting set threw up!

On a couple of occasions, I ended up putting the shawl away and going back to other projects. I was fine on the stocking stitch sections but the lace needed much more concentration than I could necessarily give it while at knitting group for instance. 

The Find Your Fade shawl I would wrap around lots of times in the cold weather. For now, I’m still wearing my lovely chunky red scarf (it was a shop purchase rather than a self-knitted job though)

You can see other projects that I have made here.