Crimson Nights

Crimson Nights is worked from the top down in a crescent shape. You begin at the center with a few stitches and the shawl grows outward in double crochet, building six panels that fan into the wide curved body. Because it is a crescent, it sits around your shoulders and stays there instead of sliding off, which is what makes this shape worth the work.

The body is steady double crochet, and that is on purpose. It gives you a calm stretch of stitching before the shawl asks anything harder, and it sets up a clean field for the two colors to move against each other. The sample runs a deep red into a near-black, so the color shift reads as dusk coming on rather than a hard stripe.

The bottom is where the shawl turns. The plain body opens into a deep band of net lace, worked in chain-fives and clustered stitches that hang light and open along the curved edge. It is a shawl with real presence, the kind you reach for when you want to feel put together.

Yarn: 

904 yards / 827m of fingering weight yarn. 

The sample uses Alexandra the Art of Yarn Double Knit Sister (75% superwash merino, 25% nylon, 463 yards / 423m = 3.5 oz / 100g) in (A) Red Gem and (B) Black Chrome. A note on this yarn: it comes as two strands of fingering wound together in each cake. I separated the strands to work with a single fingering, since holding both together makes more of a DK weight. If you separate yours the same way, one cake goes further than you expect.

Hook: 

US size E/4 (3.5 mm), or the size you need for gauge.

Notions: 

Tapestry Needle

Gauge: 

21 dc and 10 dc rows = 4 inches / 10 cm, blocked. Check your gauge before you begin. On a shawl this size, a small difference in gauge changes both the finished span and how much of your 904 yards you use.

Finished Size:

Blocked, the shawl is 56 inches / 142 cm across the curved wingspan and 21 inches / 53.5 cm deep at the deepest point. Blocking is what opens the net lace at the bottom and sets the crescent, so do not skip it.