May 15, 20203 min read

Mystery Revealed: Trick of the Light

The fifth and final clue of the this year's mystery shawl, Trick of the Light, came out a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully everyone's finished their shawl by now because it's time to reveal the complete shawl!

Trick of the Light :: three-color shawl pattern from talvi knits.

Like last year's shawl, Spring It On!, the 2020 mystery shawl is also knit in three colors. The last two mysteries have been asymmetrical triangles but this year I wanted a little change of pace with the shape. Trick of the Light is worked in a crescent shape starting with a garter-tab cast-on.

GarnStories Merino Singles in the colorways After Dark, Pesto, and Chain

The color palette was something I pulled from stash. A couple of years ago I won five (!!!) skeins of yarn in GarnStories' Instagram giveaway and once the yarns arrived, I immediately knew I wanted to combine three of them into one design. Black (In the Dark) and white (Chain) are such a classic, neutral color pairing. Throw a bright pop of color (Pesto) into the mixture and it's a perfect trio of grellow.

The first clue starts off the mystery with a sliver of garter stitch accented by a row of bobbles. If your bobbles tend to plop to the wrong side of the work, here's a super helpful tip from Raveler heidintekeleet:

Instead of "ssk, k3tog" I knit "k3tog, ssk". Everything else is knit the same way, but in this kind of reverse order of the decreases the bobbles seem to pop on the right side immediately.

Thanks for the tip!

Clue 2 adds one of my all-time favorite things to knit: garter stitch stripes. It's such a simple design feature but in this highly contrasting color combination it brings a visually interesting section to the shawl.

In Clue 3 things get a little interesting: this clue features a bit of lace and optional beads. The lace pattern is a bit tricky to work at first since it contains both single and double yarnovers. Once you get the hang of the pattern it becomes quite logical and rhythmic but — I have to confess — it kicked my butt, too. I recommend using stitch markers between lace repeats until you start seeing how it forms.

Beads are a few and far between — and entirely optional. I've become to realize that I tend not to wear heavily beaded shawls because I find them too, well, heavy. A little bit of sparkle without the beads weighing the shawl down and it's the right amount for me.

Clue 4 and more bobbles. These bobble blocks are my favorite feature of this shawl (although the lace is pretty, too). My original vision for the shawl was nothing but bobble blocks and then a lace border. But that would've been a very dull mystery shawl, right?

And finally, Clue 5 with more lace. This is the same lace pattern that was already featured in Clue 3 but now there's more of it. This lovely lace pattern is called Rain but to me it looks quite the opposite: I think it resembles candle flames. By the by, I highly recommend taking a look through the test of the String Geekery blog — there's some amazing lace and colorwork patterns on there.

The bind-off is a bit of a twist! For once I have not used a picot bind-off in a shawl. Instead, Trick of the Light is finished with a simple elastic bind-off but done from the wrong side. Done in a starkly contrasting color it adds a bit of edginess (ba-dum tss!) to the shawl.