Like many others, I fell in love with a free pattern last summer and wanted to cast it on. Gentle Slopes by Quinn Reverendo for Fairmount Fibers was featured by ESK, as part of a push to sell Fino mini sets.

Photo is originally from pattern page, captured here with text over top from when ESK featured it on their social media.

I thought I would cast it on as a birthday knit for myself and quickly lost my enthusiasm for it—I need to be in the right mood for a shawl and I’m not the biggest wearer of them, despite liking to knit them. When Bad Times started up for me in February of this year, I decided it was time to finally cast this on, but there was one big problem: while the pattern photos had been updated for the mini skein sets to be used, the pattern still had not. It was written for 2 full skeins, not a 5 skein mini set. And I knew that wouldn’t do, and with a little research realized that no one has documented how to knit this shawl as pictured.

So. See a need, fill a need. Here’s how to use a mini set to achieve the same look as the pattern sample. It’s not difficult, but it did take a little reverse engineering. All linked yarns are from ESK, and all amounts given were for my gauge, but should be roughly correct for expectations.

NOTE: I found the cast-on instructions for this project over-fiddly and complicated. I did a simple garter tab cast on and simply picked up stitches from the cast on edge instead of going through the trouble of a more complicated crocheted provisional cast on.

Modifications for the mini-skein set in place of CC in the original pattern:

1 full skein “Corsage” Manos del Uruguay Fino
1 “Zelda” mini set MdU Fino

Key:

CC1 = 4th darkest color

CC2= Middle value color

CC3= Second lightest color

CC4= Lightest color

CC5= darkest/brownest color

For stripe repeats 1-26, use CC1. I used ~9 grams of yarn for this section.

For stripe repeats 27-39, use CC2. I used ~10 grams of yarn for this section.

For stripe repeats 40-52, use CC3. I used ~14 grams of yarn for this section.

For stripe repeats 53-64, use CC4. I used ~17 grams of yarn for this section.

The border color is CC5: I used the full mini skein plus 1 gram of CC1 to finish the bind off.
There was about 4 grams of the main color left over at the end of the shawl, so an extra stripe or two could reasonably be added in the shawl if one desired to use up as much of the yarn as possible. You have your choice of which color you’d like to see more of.

And that’s it! Easy Peasy.

-Amanda