This is Lustrous Shawl designed by Noma Ndluvo. I knit mine in Anzula Cricket, an 80% merino, 10% cashmere, 10% nylon this-one’s-for-me DK weight.

Lustrous Shawl is the cover photo shawl from Jen Arnall-Culliford’s “Confident Knitting” book. I’ve been watching her wonderful technique videos for a few years now. It was beyond time to support her by purchasing her books. I took advantage of a new year discount on her series of three books, “Confident Knitting,” “Boost Your Knitting,” and “A Year of Techniques” and took the confident knitting plunge. Many designers, including Arnall-Culliford, are featured in the books. If you follow the links to Ravelry you’ll be able to take a look at each of the projects in each of the books.

Each pattern teaches a different technique, with video support. I purchased both the paper copies of the books and the ebook through MDK in the US. It looks like they are currently out-of-stock at the shop, but you should be able to find the books at other local yarn shops. They are also available on Arnall-Culliford’s own UK website. The paper copies of the books purchased at MDK came with a one-time code that allows the patterns to be downloaded to your Ravelry library. I prefer knitting from digital copies of patterns because I like to print out the core pattern so I can mark it up if I need to. But for me there’s still nothing better than the visual and tactile enjoyment of a book in hand. This series satisfies both needs.

The technique to be learned in Lustrous Shawl is reversible cables. You must have been wondering when I’d get to the point. Here’s another look at both sides of Lustrous Shawl.

If you’ve worked with reversible cables before you already know that the secret of why this works is…ribbing. The cables are worked amid ribbing instead of stockinette or reverse stockinette. For a long time I shied away from trying reversible cables because I figured it would be difficult. It isn’t. It’s just as easy as “regular” cables. If you can cable you can work reversible ones.

I am totally liking this small shawl. And Anzula Cricket makes it a total luxury.

If you want to give reverse cabling a try you might want to knit this worsted weight freebie: “Weather…or Knot” by Mindy Ross. Here’s my version and you can read more about it here.

I had a good bit of difficulty integrating the I-Cord dangles into the body of the scarf in a tidy way. Your mileage may vary. If I knit this again I plan to just work a few more inches of ribbing before I start in on the cables. The I-Cord is certainly distinctive though. I’m not sorry I persevered.