Yardage by size and weight
For a plain or simply textured triangular or crescent shawl. Lace patterns use less yarn than stockinette for the same blocked size; dense texture and garter use more; a long rectangular wrap at the same area is about the same.
| Shawl | Blocked size (about) | Lace weight | Fingering | DK |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shawlette or scarf-shawl | 50 × 20" | 350–450 yd | 350–450 yd | 300–400 yd |
| Medium shawl | 60 × 28" | 500–700 yd | 500–700 yd | 450–600 yd |
| Large shawl or wrap | 72 × 36" | 750–1,000 yd | 800–1,000 yd | 650–850 yd |
| Full lace shawl (fine, heavily blocked) | 72 × 36" | 600–900 yd | — | — |
Lace weight and fingering take similar yardage for the same size because lace is knit on larger needles and blocked harder; the lace shawl weighs half as much. A medium shawl is one or two 100 g skeins of fingering (400–450 yards each), and that is why so many shawl patterns are written for exactly one or two skeins. A single 50 g ball of lace weight (700–800 yards) is a whole lace shawl.
For a pattern, use its yardage and the calculator on the yarn page. Buy the extra skein for a two-skein shawl — a shawl can be made smaller if you run short, but only if you planned for it before the border.
What a shawl yarn needs
Drape. A shawl hangs; it does not have to spring back. So the fibers that make a poor sweater make a fine shawl: silk, alpaca, mohair, linen, bamboo, and merino singles. Pure elastic wool shawls are warm and bouncy but do not swing.
Blocking. A shawl, and a lace shawl especially, is finished by stretching it wet and pinning it, and it is the fiber's memory of that stretch that makes lace open. Wool, alpaca and silk hold a block; cotton and linen hold it until the next wash; acrylic never holds one at all unless steamed.
The fabric is the yarn. With no gauge to match, the yarn can be anything from cobweb to DK, and the needle size is chosen for the fabric you want. A fingering yarn on a US 6 makes an open, airy shawl; the same yarn on a US 3 makes a dense, warm one.
Fibers for shawls
Merino fingering, plied or single: the all-purpose shawl yarn — Dream in Color Jilly (a single with luster), Zitron Feinheit, Malabrigo Arroyo at DK. Merino-silk: drape and sheen, the classic lace shawl — Juniper Moon Findley, Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool. Mohair-silk lace: the halo shawls, and the strand to hold with another yarn — Dream in Color Billy Kid Silk, Berroco Aerial, Artyarns Silk Mohair Glitter and Mohair Ombre, Schoppel Silky Cat. Alpaca and suri: warmth and a soft halo — Blue Sky Prairie and Brushed Suri, Plymouth Suri Stratus, HiKoo Rylie. Cashmere: Artyarns Cashmere 1, for the one shawl you will keep forever. Gradient and striping: Zauberball Crazy, Starke 6, Concentric, Noro Tsubame — the one-skein shawls where the color is the pattern, and the self-striping guide says how the stripes come out at shawl width. Summer: Huasco Coton, Schoppel Cotton Ball, Noro Kakigori, Zooey.
Hand-dyed and variegated
Shawls are where hand-dyed yarn looks best — a shawl is wide enough that the colors spread into a wash rather than pooling — and where a highly variegated skein can still hide a lace pattern. Semi-solids and tonals for lace; variegated and speckled for plain stockinette and garter; a gradient for a simple shape that lets the fade show. The Color Board puts a candidate main color and border next to each other.
Holding two yarns
A mohair-silk lace held with a fingering merino makes a shawl with the merino's body and the mohair's halo, and takes the full yardage of each. The holding yarns together guide has the pairings and the arithmetic.