Put Your Knitting Through the Paces: Turnout Shawl

Imagine visiting an equestrian barn. You approach by passing some rolling, grassy green hills and eventually come up to a long driveway with a fence that lines one side. On the other side of the fence is a small grove of trees beside a pond with ducks and geese. You continue along the drive, and as you come over the crest of a hill, a group of buildings appears. The air is fresh, tinged with the smell of hay.

There’s an outdoor arena with several kids in the middle of a riding lesson, with each young rider paired with a horse as different as the next—ponies, paints, thoroughbreds, quarterhorses—each going through a sequence that combines the walk, trot, and canter. The inside of the barn is well kept, and even though there’s the unavoidable presence of dust that comes from a place where animals live, it is as clean as it can be. You can hear the clip-clop of the hooves as a horse is led down the aisle, and the occasional whinny, neigh, or snort comes from the stalls.

At the end of the lesson, the riders groom the horses, clean the tack and rack the saddles, and bring the horses out of the barn and down the hill to the grassy, fenced-in pastures for turnout for the rest of the day—some time to relax and graze as a reward for hard work in the arena.

The fine lines of the Turnout Shawl evoke sections of fencing that might surround a barn’s turnout pasture, giving knitters a chance to play with texture and explore the different ways that lines can work within a geometrical shape. This classic triangular shawl shape uses traveling cables and columns of twisted stitches to show off diagonal lines, intersecting lines, parallel lines, and negative space. All the textures are set on a reverse stockinette background so they have a chance to shine, and the slipstitch edge that surrounds the piece gives this shawl a polished finish.

This shawl is worked in fingering weight yarn, making it light enough to wear year-round, whether as layering piece in colder months or as a nice accent for cool summer evenings.

MATERIALS
Yarn Kelbourne Woolens Camper (100% wool; 200 yd/50 g; fingering weight); #92 Cream or #305 Moss Heather, 5 skeins.
Needle Size 3 (3.25 mm) 24" (60 cm) circular needle. Adjust needle size if necessary to obtain the correct gauge.
Notions Cable needle (cn); removable stitch markers (optional); tapestry needle.
Gauge 37 sts and 37½ rows = 4" (10 cm) in chart patterns, blocked.
Finished Size About 68¾" (174.6 cm) across top edge and 21¼" (54 cm) from top edge to lower point, blocked.