Hacking Waiting For Rain

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This document is more of a recipe for how to do some of the mods I’ve been hearing
people are interested in doing! It will also include the mods that I used to make the striped
two colour Briggs & Little Sport version of Waiting for Rain.

A few notes though, this document is not straight forward like how the actual Waiting for
Rain pattern is. It’s tips and tricks, not directly written out step-by-step instructions. Even
for the mods I used on the two coloured sample. If you’re wanting to work a written out
step-by-step pattern I strongly recommend you work Waiting for Rain without any of these
modifications.

That being said, this pattern is VERY adaptable! There’s lots of room to change yarn
weight, add more lace, work it in two colour stripes or even three colour stripes. Once you
understand the concept of the shawl you will be able to modify it to suit your creative
spirits!

Details for the Briggs & Little 2) Add more short row lace sections in.
sample of Waiting for Rain. 3) Use a thicker yarn or a larger needle size.
4) Add more WS/RS rows (garter) at the very
Yarn: end of the shawl before you cast off.

2 skeins of Briggs & Little Sport in Substituting yarns:

colourway “Sheeps Grey”, 1 skein of
Briggs & Little Sport in colourway “Fawn”.
Needles:
4.5mm (US7) circular needles.
Gauge:
20 stitches x 28 rows =4” (10cm) square
knit flat in garter stitch and blocked.
Size of shawl:
90” (2.3m) along the wingspan of the
shawl, 25” (64cm) deep at the deepest
point.
Honestly I think this shawl would look lovely
in all types of yarn. The original was worked
in shiny, gorgeous, fingering weight yarn
(Plucky Primo Fingering) and the striped
sample was worked in lovely rough
single-ply Briggs & Little Sport.
If you want to do this pattern in a thinner
yarn (lace) or a thicker yarn (worsted, bulky)
then just choose a needle that’s a little bit
bigger than the size that the ball-band calls
for. So worsted is typically a 4.5mm (US 7)
or 5mm (US 8) you could go for a 5.5mm
(US 9), Bulky uses a needle size like a 6mm
(US 10) or 6.5mm (US 10.5) so you could go
for a 7mm.

Using a different weight yarn than the

Can I make it bigger?
There are a few ways you can make it
bigger
1) Add more WS/RS rows (garter) in
between the short row lace sections.
pattern calls for does mean that it can be
hard to say how much yarn you’re going to
need. Changing the gauge will change the
yarn consumption. I would just play around
and just make sure you have lots of yarn on
hand if you’re planning on doing yarn
substitutions.

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The first building block: The
crescent shawl shape.
This shawl is worked from the top down,
and it’s made larger by increasing at the
beginning and end of the row.
In the pattern the WS and RS rows are
the rows you’ll need to keep repeating to
create the crescent shape.
Wrong Side (WS) row: K2, YO, knit until
last 2 stitches, YO, K2.
Right Side (RS) row: K2,
KYOK into the the next stitch (which is a
yarn over), knit until last 3 stitches, KYOK
into the next stitch, K2.
You’re increasing two stitches on the WS
row and four stitches on the RS row.
If you were just to work the increases
on either side you would have a nicely
shaped crescent shawl.
If you’re new to shawl shaping techniques
like this one I recommend knitting a tiny
version. Casting on this shawl and follow-
ing the instructions for the WS and RS
rows until you start to see the shape take
place.
Tight top edge fix:
If you notice the top edge of the shawl is
feeling tight when you pull on it there’s an
easy, quick fix.
On the RS rows put a YO in between your
first and last K2 stitches. When you work
the WS row drop the YO. It will make your
2 stitch border a lot looser and less likely
to feel tight!
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Adding stripes:
To add stripes you just start knitting with a
contrasting colour on a RS row.
For small stripes, like how I have in the Briggs
& Little sample, you’re just working two rows.
The RS row you started the contrasting
colour on - and then the WS row directly
afterwards. Then you change back to the
main colour.
If you want bigger stripes, just work
however many rows you feel like, making
sure that you just change your colours on a
RS row.
Lace short rows in a contrasting
colour:
There are two ways that I’m going to
mention:
1) start knitting with the contrasting colour
at the beginning of the row, so including the
lace short rows in a stripe that will extend to
either end of your project.
2) Midway through the row, right before
you’re about to start working the lace
stitches, swap to your contrasting colour.
This way will need lots of ends woven in as
you’re starting with a contrasting colour in
the middle of a row. Work the rest of the lace
short rows and then switch back to the main
colour once you’re done working them.
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Adding or removing repeats from the Adding more lace short rows:
lace short row chart:
Top secret tip: You can put a lace short row
The best way to do this is by looking at the section at any point in the shawl. You could
charts. The charts have two sections. The stack them on top of each other, you could
bottom section and the top section. Both the have multiple per row. All you need is to
bottom section and the top section have their be on a RS row and to make sure you have
own red-outlined repeat area. enough stitches to work the lace section,
wherever you want to put it.
The chart, at it’s smallest, needs 88 stitches
to work. You need 5 repeats of the Result of adding more short row
red-outlined area on the bottom to have 1 lace sections:
repeat on the top of the chart.
The more short row lace sections that you
So the very smallest you can make the chart add, the deeper the shawl will get.
is with 5 repeats on the bottom and 1 on the
top. Because you’re adding depth every time
you add a short row, and you’re not
To work more repeats is easy. Every time you increasing on the edges to add to the
add a repeat of the bottom red outlined area, length of the shawl.
you just need to add one more repeat to the
top.

So if you have 6 repeats underneath you’ll

have 2 on top. 7 underneath, 3 on top, etc,
etc.

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 Lace-y picot-style cast-off:

You may hear rumours of an “alternate”

cast-off. Here it is. I heavily modified this
cast-off from one found in a book many
moons ago. I originally used this version
in my pattern, Shine! You can see the
traditional version on my patterns Late
August, or Solarium. I kinda love this
cast-off, canya tell?

This is a knitted-on cast-off, which is

different than any regular cast-off
because you’ll be working each picot one
at a time from side to side and joining
with live stitches from the edge of your
shawl as you go.

To start you should be on a RS row.

Cast on 3 stitches using the knitted

cast-on method.

Row 1) K2, K2tog with one live stitch from

body of shawl.

Row 2) K1, double yarn over, K2tog.

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Row 3) YO, K1, knit and purl into the same

stitch, K3tog with two live stitches from
body of shawl.

Row 4) K5.

Row 5) Bind off 2, K1, K2tog with one live

stitch from the body of the shawl.

Repeat rows 2-5 until you’ve worked all

the stitches from the body of the shawl.
You’ll still have some stitches on your
needle once you’re done working the
knitted edging, cast them off in the usual
fashion and weave in the ends!

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