How To Knit Winged Crescent Shawls

Today’s topic in our crescent shawl knitting course is how to knit winged crescent shawls. How are they constructed, and how can we knit them? After reading this article the principles, construction and even the design of winged crescent shawls will be easy for you, promise!

The Construction of Winged Crescent Shawls

The basic idea is to use a half circle with additional shaping at the outer sections (the outer “rings” of the half circle) The wings are basic triangles worked sideways.

The final shape of winged crescents is achieved by blocking. (The dashed line in the picture shows the final shape.)

To knit winged crescents we need to know two things:

• How to knit half circles, and
• How to add wings.

Let’s start with the shaping of a half circle shawl.

Shawl Shaping: The Half Circle

Circular shawls are best worked from the center outwards, and half circles are no exception. Instead of working in the round (like for a normal circle) we cast on fewer stitches and work back and forth.

You can find detailed instructions on how to knit half circles in my earlier article Circular Segment Shawls (a half circle is a circle segment).

Adding Wings

As you can see in the picture below we need to add two wings to our half circle to create a winged crescent shawl. These wings are basically triangles worked sideways. The increase is worked on the outer side (one stitch every other row).

It totally looks like a cat, doesn’t it? Maybe I should add a cat shape to my shawl shape repertoire!

You can find a pattern template for a winged crescent shawl below. An example pattern for this shape is the Phoebe shawl shown below.

Pattern Template: Winged Crescent Shawls

• CO 6 sts and purl one row.
• Knit 2 rows.
• Increase row: K1, (YO, k1) to last stitch, YO, k1.
• Knit 5 rows.
• Repeat increase row.
• Knit 11 rows.
• Repeat increase row.
• Knit 23 rows.
• Repeat increase row.
• *
• K1, YO, k to last stitch, YO, k1.
• Next row: Knit.
• *
• Repeat from * to * 22 times more (or until shawl is of desired size).
• Repeat increase row.
• Repeat from * to * 44 times more (or until shawl is of desired size).
• Bind off loosely and block gently into crescent shape.