Trustfall Shawl Project Notes: Knitted with the Recommended Malabrigo Yarns (Up to Cast-On)

Drawn to its beautiful color palette and mosaic motifs, I decided to knit the Trustfall Shawl using the recommended Malabrigo yarns, which I ordered from overseas specifically for this project.

In this post, I’ve gathered my project notes from knitting the Trustfall Shawl with the recommended yarns, including the things I noticed, questioned, and learned along the way.

Recommended Malabrigo Yarns yarn and substitute yarn

The yarns specified in the pattern are Malabrigo:

• Caprino – Teal Feather（CAP412）
• Caprino – Sunset（CAP096）
• Mechita – Eggplant

In addition to those, I also used some leftover angora wool that came in a lucky bag from a Japanese yarn shop (AVRIL) around 2020.

This “mystery leftover yarn” had been sitting unused for nearly six years before finally getting its moment.

Unable to Contain My Excitement… I Started Without a Gauge Swatch

As the title suggests, this is probably a bad example 😅

Of course, the pattern does include gauge information.
But this is a shawl, not a sweater—there’s no need to match an exact finished size.

On top of that, the yarn I chose is very light and soft:

• Even if it turns out a bit smaller, it will still work well for my height
• Even if it grows larger, it won’t become heavy or awkward to wear

For those reasons, I decided to boldly start knitting without checking gauge.

If a few months from now I’m saying,
“I had to rip it out because the size didn’t work,”
please feel free to laugh at me.

The Mystery Comment About Creating a Stretchy Upper Edge

The first thing that made me pause with a “?” while reading through the pattern was this note about stretch:

To get a nice and stretchy upper edge, add a yarn over after the very first stitch of each RS row and then drop it off the needle on the following row.

I couldn’t quite picture what this meant, so I asked ChatGPT—and learned that it refers to the following technique:

By repeating this process, extra slack is introduced along the finished upper edge (the top edge of the right-hand triangle), making it more flexible.

It feels less like “stretch” and more like deliberately adding ease, but apparently this is a fairly common technique in shawl knitting.

I’ve hardly knitted any shawls before, so this was completely new to me!

Improvising with a Substitute Yarn in the Mosaic Section… Hmm?

I was especially excited to reach the mosaic chart, inspired by the blue-green and orange colorwork and wondering how it would be constructed.

This is where the white substitute yarn comes into play.

As I followed the chart, the fabric started to look a bit fuzzy, and the Eggplant color felt slightly muted—softer and gentler than expected.

Ah.
Right.
This substitute yarn is angora wool.

Soft and fluffy… maybe too soft 😄

I originally fell in love with this pattern because of its crisp, high-contrast colorwork. This section ended up looking a little more subdued than I had imagined.

I briefly thought, “Maybe I should just buy the recommended yarn after all,”
but buying it domestically would have cost around ¥5,000 per skein including shipping.

So in the end, I stuck with my original plan and kept the white section as a substitute.

The Malabrigo Yarns I Fell in Love With Were Absolutely Worth Importing

This project started because I fell in love with the yarn itself—so much so that I went out of my way to import it.

The texture is smooth and soft (while the substitute yarn is undeniably fluffy), and with endless rows of garter stitch, the knitting feels almost meditative, calming both my hands and my mind.

This is shaping up to be a comforting project—one I’ll slowly work on during those days when I’m feeling a little worn out.