Celebrating Inauguration Day 2021, A More Perfect Union is a generous three color crescent influenced by traditional red, white, and blue holiday bunting, designed specifically for the beautiful Chicken Coop Dyeworks yarns shown here.

The shawl idea was born when dyer extraordinaire Carolyn and I were celebrating on Instagram! She asked if I’d be interested in teaming up to commemorate the history-making day our first Black/Asian/female Vice President, Kamala Harris is sworn in. Of course I immediately jumped at it! We both want so much to share our excitement with you all! The gorgeous yarn she then sent drove my design direction. The pattern is named after the 2021 inaugural theme and we both hope you LOVE IT!

This shawl is part of my 9 Lives eBook subscription series. Though the book itself is based on a palette of greys and golds, I’ve added in this shawl commemorating an incredibly important historical event! Thank you for knitting my patterns and supporting indie pattern design! Use #aMorePerfectUnion and #romihill or #romidesigns to connect on social media.

About the subscription:

The only constant is change. It was one of my grandmother’s favorite sayings! Lately, I’ve found myself inexplicably collecting grey and gold yarn. At this point in my life, I’ve begun to realize that, when I get in a color mood, there’s a reason. Last year I was grey and sad. This year, gold began to creep into everything I reached for. And then it hit me while I was working on my Seismic shawl, and I realized why I’ve been so drawn to that combination.

Long ago when I was wee, my grandmother worked as Public Relations Director for the San Francisco Ballet. (Yes there were all sorts of perqs with that: Nutcracker every December, getting to spend evenings with the conductor’s family while my mother and grandmother were in night school, meeting the ballerinas - heaven for a ballet-crazy kid!) We had very little money, and so my grandmother carefully collected her work wardrobe. Most of her clothes were made by her: fine crocheted tops and lacy dickies from cotton thread, and my mother, who scoured the remnant bins for wools and sewed skirts. My grandmother’s most prized possessions were her three cashmere cardigans, blue, grey and gold. She wore the latter two until they could no longer be mended, and then she gave them to me. My over-eager petting of the cashmere may, I fear, have hastened their demise. And then they were mine. My grey and gold went with me everywhere as my constant companions, and were cuddled until they finally wasted away to nothing. They gave me years of comfort, warmth, and calm.

So you see, through my struggles I have come back to grey and gold, and now I hope very much that I can share a little bit of that warmth and kindness in this eBook. Life doesn’t follow a steady course, and things change, sometimes for the better and sometimes not so much. I have fallen down, but not permanently, and I am striving to create beauty in all the unexpected places and changes again. This eBook celebrates life’s cycle of change, from city to country, from having kids at home to waving farewell to them as they venture off, from this to that. And with love to you in grey and gold.

The nine shawl patterns in this eBook will be delivered within a subscription period ending May 31, 2021. There is no specific delivery date for each pattern. All patterns will have charts and written instructions, and there will be one, two and three color patterns in different weights of yarn. Each pattern in this eBook will be available to purchase separately. Happy knitting!

Note that purchasing the eBook represents a significant discount over purchasing each pattern separately. No refunds can be given for buying the patterns separately and then, at a later date, purchasing the complete eBook. If you have made a single pattern purchase in error and wished to purchase the book instead, please contact me within a week to resolve the issue. Thank you!

Thank you for knitting my patterns and supporting indie pattern design! Subscribe to my newsletter here and get 15% off your first pattern order; find me on Instagram at @RomiDesigns; come by and say hello in my Ravelry group, @Romi’s Studio, where you can find friendship, pattern help, and community!