Groovy Shawl
- Posted on: 2021-03-01
- |
- Views: 1371
- |
- Category:
- ▸ Finished Projects
***Originally published on July 16, 2014***
This shawl was born out of a USPS disaster. A few months back, my friend Naomi emailed me, wanting to design a yarn for her friend’s wedding shawl (here is the pattern she was using — isn’t it cool?). We went back and forth over email, tweaking the weight and fiber content, and finally landed on a beautiful blend of bamboo and linen.
We wound it up, shipped it out…and it never arrived by the intended deadline that she needed it by, to get cracking on it and have it finished for the bridal shower. Now, you’ll never meet a bigger fan of the U.S. postal system, but sadly there have been a handful of times in my 6+ years using them to ship where the system has failed, and this was one of them.
So I quickly wound up another cone that mimicked the original blend (we were temporarily out of one of the ingredients I’d used, but came up with a pretty good substitute on the fly), sent it out to her, and thankfully this one arrived just in the nick of time.
Of course, weeks later, the original cone DID show up on her doorstep, so when she sent it back to me, I found myself with 820 yards of a wonderfully drapey, elegant yarn on my hands. My original idea was to work up the same shawl she was and use it as a store sample, but while $12 is a reasonable amount to pay for a pattern for a good friend’s wedding shawl, it seemed prohibitively expensive to me as a pattern to encourage customers to try.
So I asked Kristina to come up with a better use for this yarn, and here is what she came up with: The Groovy Shawl.
The pattern’s Rav photo shows it worked up in a springy solid color yarn, which I think looks great too, but I love how the black and silvery shades in Naomi’s yarn dresses this pattern up to be just a little bit fancier.
The shawl features these thick strips of alternating stockinette, that almost look like super wide ribbing, and give the piece an amazing amount of stretchiness and body, given that it’s comprised of very drapey fibers. This would be a great late-summer knit, and the pattern is available for purchase on Ravelry, or you can buy it in person at Yarnia as well.
