The Fabric Alchemist

While I identify more as a sewist than as a knitter, I do knit frequently. My bus commute is nearly an hour and knitting helps to pass the time. Knitting is also my go to activity when I just need to decompress, zone out, and almost meditate. I knit when I am on planes, trains, while I watch tv, and to help me go to sleep (counting stitches instead of sheep).

Like with fabric, I try not to buy yarn withou a project in mind. But my yarn stash still had a substantial amount of idle-yarn and I spent the first part of 2016 trying to purge the stash and find projects.

Enter my coworker who had just returned from the Puget Sound Local Yarn Shop Tour. This regional self-guided tour takes place every May and all the participating yarn shops feature exclusive patterns. My coworker gave me a stack of patterns to look through and photocopy, as I had to work the weekend of the LYS Tour.

One of the patterns I chose was the Skyamsen Shawlette, designed by Jennifer Miller for The Weaving Works in Seattle.

The shawlette is asymmetrical with a jagged lace edging, reminicent of dragon teeth. It calls for fingering yarn — I had the right about of DK weight yarn, which I had been trying to use up for the past 3 years. I have never been interested in shawls before, but the stark simplicity of this pattern appealed to me.

The pattern was easy to follow as it is all garter stitch with the exception of the yarn-overs to make the lace edging.

The difference between the DK and recommended fingering yarn is noticable. My shawlette is smaller and looks a bit bulkier than the example featured on the pattern and on their Ravelry page. Even after blocking the lace jagged edges are not very distinct.

In spite of the bulkier result, I enjoy the shawl. (Though i seem to have misplaced it somewhere in the house during the hot summer.) I wear it more like a scarf than an over-the-shoulder shawl and plan to put it into heavy rotation this fall and winter.

The Skyamsen Shawlette costs $4.00 on Ravelry. I was fortunate to have gotten a free copy from a LYS Tour attendee.

I am not sure if I will make it again, at least not for myself. Like I said, I’m not really a shawl person and I don’t like to have knitwear duplicates. I also want to keep challenging my knitting skills with more complicated and complex patterns. But it would make a good gift as it only calls for 440 yards of fingering yarn.