The Shift

So you’ve likely seen Andrea Mowry’s “Shift” series of patterns by now .. they’re beautiful and awesome and gorgeous and … yeah, stunning. The only thing is they are made with an excruciatingly expensive yarn that’s also hard to find and hard to substitute … NO LONGER! Schoppel’s line of self-striping, marled yarns are an excellent sub. So I am going to make a Shift neck-thingy (see picture above) and try my hand at being shifty.

Materials

• Schoppel Edition 3: 3 balls, 1 each in a different colourway
• 3.75mm/US5 – 24″ circular needles (or longer)
• Pattern: The Shift by Andrea Mowry

Schoppel Edition 3

Schoppel Edition 3 is a very soft and very pretty merino wool that knits up in a marled ombre striping colourway (it’s a shifty kinda yarn). It is very reasonably priced at $15.97 a skein (compared with $44 per skein, it’s a very civilized price). Schoppel products are made in Germany, so there’s no child labour, undue polluting or other kinds of suffering associated with the yarns manufacturing. It should only take 3 balls of Schoppel Edition 3 to make “The Shift” (based on the numbers from other knitters on Ravelry), so it isn’t a massive investment of time or energy … a nice little summer project.

The only problem with “The Shift” and Schoppel Edition 3 is the yarn is balled, not skeined, so its hard to visualize what the colours will look like. I’ve trolled the projects on Ravelry and picked out some of the more successful and beautiful colour combinations that other knitters have come up with for the project (the colour codes are below).

• 2299 Warm Image, 2349 Trace Elements, 2362 Blue Veil (tanya927)
• 2329 Beach Cafe,  2349 Trace Elements,  2362 Blue Veil (suegriot)
• 2296 English Garden,  2298 Wash Day, 2301 Dew Point (remyliao)
• 2296 English Garden,  2298 Wash Day, 2329 Beach Cafe (daners33)
• 2299 Warm Image, 2349 Trace Elements, 2361 Aunt Emma (annili13)
• 2299 Warm Image,  2301 Dew Point, 2361 Aunt Emma (knitpurlbake)
• 2298 Wash Day,  2299 Warm Image,  2301 Dew Point (craftynanalady)

I haven’t decided on which colour combo I’m going to go with … maybe the top-left, or maybe I’ll come up with something all my own. I like the dark, moody, warm colour inspiration above on the left, so maybe 2299, 2328, and 2361. I also like the cool colours on the right with the blues, neutrals, and orange, in which case I’d do 2329, 2349, and 2362. If I wanted to go for the full cool palette on the right I’d try 2298, 2333, and 2349. Or combine the two, go for the reds and pinks from 2361, the leafy green and orange from 2328, and the neutrals from 2349. I’ll have to let it marinate.

Since you’ve read to the end, what do you think? Should I be safe and go with one of the combos in the project samples from Ravelry? Or should I blaze my own trail, come up with something of my own, but risk making a smelly fart of a colour combination? What would you do? What would you want to do? Let me know in the comments!