Juniper Ombre Shrug - Cast On

Last week I received my copy of Melissa Leapman's new book Knitting Modular - Shawls, Wraps and Stoles.  It contains design elements - wedges, vertical inserts, horizontal inserts, ends and knit on borders - that you can combine in a multitude of ways.  I learned from her Facebook page that she was holding a knit along for the book to encourage people to try their hand at designing their own shawls, wraps or stoles based upon the elements from the book.  I have been wanting to design a shrug that started out with a square worked from the center out, so I grabbed some yarn from my stash and sat down with the book.  The yarn set that I grabbed is the Juniper Ombre set from The Unique Sheep.  I have a number of these in DK weight yarn and also a number in fingering weight.  This is one of my fingering weight sets.

For working in the round she recommends a Magic-Loop Cast On, which I had not done before.  It did take me two tries to get it right, but once I got it I decided that I like it.  It creates a little button in the center, like a tiny little doughnut, and you can cinch it tight so there is no hole and it is very firm.  Before I grabbed my yarn I had flipped through the entire book, but when I sat down with my yarn and picked up the book again I opened it at random and just happened to like the lace wedge on the page I opened to.  It is #91 on page 148.  To work the square I cast on 8 stitches and then started with the first row of the chart.  The top picture is one full repeat of the chart.

Pattern:  Created from Knitting Modular by Melissa Leapman
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Kiri
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)