How to Knit Boomerang Shawls

To make a long story short: A boomerang shawl is a vortex shawl, at least when it comes to its final shape. The difference is their direction of knitting which makes them interesting both as adjustable shawls as well as for shawl design in general. Let’s take a closer look.

The most simple pattern template for a boomerang shawl is as follows:

• Cast on 5 stitches
• Row 1 (RS): Knit to last stitch, YO, kfb.
• Row 2 (WS): YO, knit to last 3 stitches, k2tog, k1.
• Repeat rows 1 and 2 until you run out of yarn or shawl is of desired size.

As I like clean edges and don’t feel comfortable with yarn overs at the beginning of a row I’d knit a refined version of a boomerang shawl as follows:

• Cast on 5 stitches
• Row 1 (RS): Sl1 wyb, knit to last 2 stitches, YO, kfb, ktbl.
• Row 2 (WS): Sl1 wyf, YO, knit to last 3 stitches, k2tog, p1.
• Repeat rows 1 and 2 until you run out of yarn or shawl is of desired size.

The result is a wide triangle leaning to the left side, looking like a mirrored vortex shawl, and with clean edges.

Whenever I’m unsure about a specific construction method or want to make sure a design works out as planned I knit a little swatch in the target shape, so I did here. Knitted it looks like the picture below.

It has the same shape as a vortex shawl (see picture below).

The main difference is the knitting direction! For vortex shawls it’s vertical, for boomerang shawls it’s horizontal.

Any questions or suggestions? Let me know by leaving a comment below!