Stashing down for the move to Maine, I came across this beautiful skein of 100% cobweb weight linen yarn from a discontinued yarn company. It has been in my stash for years! And over the years I’ve tried to make several different design concepts from it. But nothing really stuck.
Around about February a new friend from church invited me over to the land she and her husband had purchased. I couldn’t go without a gift! (I mean I could, but that’s not very knitterly of me.) So, I set to work on a shawl with this midnight blue yarn. I’d seen my friend wear navy blue almost every zoom, so I figured it was the best choice.
Our conversations ran to her plans for the land and the garden she was starting to grow. Elephant garlic from a family member awaited planting in her kitchen! Thinking about elephant garlic made me think about buds, so into the design went some giant blooms. In the transition from sample to published patterns, I wanted to play off the sizing and inserted some regular sized blooms to offset the giant elephant garlic inspired ones.
“Good fences make good neighours” the other aspect of the shawl leaped onto my needles. With it a fun contrast – flowers are solid, and fences (well wood rail ones) are see through. With the stitches I couldn’t resist a little pun flipping to see through buds and solid fences! By incorporating this year’s theme technique – slipped stitches – and last year’s Butterfly Drop Stitch, fence rails run along a garter background and drop stitches create the flower petals.
(Sorry picture drive went down earlier this week… I waited on the blog, but as it is Saturday and still down, so you’ll have to wait until camera dad can walk me through fixing it from Maine for all the pretties :-/) – ETA: thanks to camera dad, the pictures are back!
A picot edge finished it off. In the final design I added a scalloped boarder. If you prefer only the picots, simply work rows 1-17 once more, and then work a wrong side picot bind off straight across the wrong side row.
After a wonderful (socially-distant) visit on their property and gifting her the shawl, Eco Stitch in the UK offered yarn support for the design. A new dimension was added and the name, I hope, honors both!
To catch the quick stitch demos