I love a challenge. Design challenge. Tight deadline. Occasional game of yarn chicken. I love it all. The Montgomery Street Bandana Shawl embodies all of it and in such a glorious way that I am excited to bring you this fabulous free pattern, courtesy of my dear friend Kristy Glass.
Let me set the scene:
Days before Rhinebeck NY Sheep & Wool Festival is set to begin along with my friend Kristy getting ready to host the first RBK Yarn Bazaar. She had a special outfit planned but something was missing:
The perfect neck accessory.
Kristy sent me a text describing her outfit and what she had in mind followed with: “Think you can design & make me something?”
I happened to have the perfect pink yarn on hand from another project. I had just over half skein in my stash and the sparkle made it all the more perfect.
I got to work on Kristy’s vision for a “bandana style” shawl to go with her vision. I also wanted to create a pattern that would both work up quickly, I mean I had to fed-ex the thing out in a few hours, but also have some stitching texture. My hands got to work!
With crochet, my go to stitch is the linen stitch for these types of designs. I love the simplicity of it while it creates a fantastic fabric. In this case I also needed a stitch pattern that would be able to grow and grow beyond the bandana size if someone wanted to make a full shawl.
Keeping the triangle shape to grow with a wider base but smaller point at the triangle peak was the fun part. By using a different stitch method to handle the increases on alternating sides I came up with the perfect crochet kerchief bandana for Kristy and one that would grow beautifully to a full size shawl.
All that was left was a mad dash to the fed-ex drop to make the 5pm cut off and a quick prayer that there were no shipping mishaps as the package was scheduled to arrive by 10:30 am on the morning of the RBK Yarn Bazaar. And the rest is history.