Cool!

I just came up with a neat idea for knitting two shawls at once. I was walking past a co-worker who looked cold and thought "I should knit her a shawl", then thought "but the Crayola shawl took so long", and then thought, "that's because garter stitch is so squat", and then thought "wouldn't a stockinette shawl be easier because the stitch is taller", and then thought, "but I'd have to knit back and forth for that, which would take even longer, but if I did a circular shawl, that's twice the shawl's worth to knit".

With me so far?

And then, and this is where the Cool! idea comes in, I thought, why not knit a circular shawl with a steek, and cut it into two semi-circular shawls, then pick up and edge the steeked side?

Two gifts in the timespan for a nice circular shawl. I'm going to have to try this.

Cast on 3, or 9 sts, join for the center of a circular shawl.
Follow Elizabeth Zimmerman's rules for increasing, but break the pattern at two points in the circle, exactly opposite from one another, with about 4 or 6 stitchs plain.

That's your steek.

Knit the shawl however you're going to knit it.

When the shawl is complete and ready for binding off on its circular edge, you can

a. Edge that puppy, but split the edging so that each semi-circle has its own edging that doesn't need to be cut.

b. move all the stitches onto a very long ribbon so the whole thing can lay flat. If you do this, you'll edge both the steek side and the circular side of each shawl.

Cut the steek, machine stitching or whatever as necessary.

You now have two complete separate semi-circles, with or without edging of any kind.

Pick up stitches on the first semi-circle, and edge the straight (cut) side however you're going to edge it. That'll go over someone's neck. Edge the circular side if you haven't done that already. I like Zimmerman's garter-stitch edging.

Pick up stitches on the second semi-circle, and edge its straight side, and its circular side, as desired.

If you followed two different patterns on each side of the steeks, you could create two completely different semi-circular shawls, and never do anything other than a simple knit stitch!

I gotta try this.