The Zugzwang Shawl: Cozy Knitting for Winter
Knitters, I’d like to introduce my newest pattern: Zugzwang. It’s a triangular shawl knit from the coziest of fibers, with interesting moves in the stitches and between them. Best of all, it’s exactly the sort of thing you want to cuddle up with this time of year.
It’s knit from Valley Yarns Becket, which is a 50/50 blend of wool and alpaca. As you might imagine, that combination makes for a very soft shawl, and the aran weight of the yarn means it’ll knit up in time to wear while it’s still cold.
What’s in the name? Zugzwang means, literally, the compulsion to move. It is a term used in checkers and chess to describe how the rules of the game compel one to move as long as you can possibly do so. In the course of a game, that can be a bad thing: it can mean you need to move even when it worsens your position. But in this shawl, it’s only a good thing.
Zugzwang’s overall pattern, created with traveling stitches and flat bobbles, bring to my mind a checkerboard poised and ready to play. Seeing all the pieces perfectly laid out makes me itch to make the first move… and knitting the angular lines of stitches that travel across every row is its own kind of pleasing compulsion.
The pattern is now available for sale on Ravelry and Payhip. Through the end of this week, you can save 10% on your pattern purchase with the code ZUGFIRST10.
Techniques
Zugzwang’s traveling stitches are made with little 1/1 cables, which you can do in the traditional way, using a cable needle, or in a quicker way that rearranges the stitches as you knit them. There are a number of ways to make these 1/1 Right and Left crosses, but here are the step-by-step instructions for my favorite way to do them:
1/1 Left Cross (LC) also called Left Twist (LT), or Cable 2 Front (C2F) (it’s all the same thing):
Reaching behind 1st st, ktbl of the 2nd st on LN without removing it from LN, then k 1st st. Drop both sts off LN.
1/1 Right Cross (RC) also called Right Twist (RT), Cable 2 Back (C2B), (it’s all just different names for the same thing):
Enter next 2 sts on LN as though to k2tog, slip them off LN, slip them back to LN tog as if to purl (maintaining new order and orientation), ktbl, ktbl.
Here’s a little video from my YouTube channel that demonstrates both: