This shawl has a very interesting backstory.

It doesn’t have the same genesis as any of the other patterns in this book, or indeed, any other pattern that I have ever designed! You’ll notice the credit at the top of this page says that the shawl was designed not only by me, but also by Rowena Davies as well. When I launched the Kickstarter to fund the writing of this book, one of the reward tiers was the opportunity to work with me to design one of the patterns that would be featured in it. I wasn’t at ALL sure that anyone would want to take me up on that offer, but I was absolutely delighted when Rowena did exactly that.

I wanted to make this “reward” the most special that I could, so I knew that the co-design was going to need to be something pretty major, rather than just a hat, or a simple cowl. No, for this to be worth Rowena’s time and efforts, I wanted it to be one of the magna opera, one of the crowning glories, if you like, of the whole shebang.

Rowena loves knitting shawls, and so it was the easiest thing in the world to settle on a shawl for our collaboration. Knowing that, as well as the fact that I wanted this to be one of the more advanced projects in the book, we knew that we wanted to incorporate lace in the design, so Rowena did some digging around in her stitch directories, to see if there were any ordinary lace stitch patterns that she really liked, that would lend themselves to being given the old DKBrioche treatment. She found one that was reminiscent of tessellating rosebuds, which we both thought was beautiful. It was up to me, after that, to play around with it, and work out how it would look, knitted in two colours rather than one, and worked into a DKBrioche fabric. There were many false starts and failed attempts, but little by little, I edged closer to something that worked, and when I showed Rowena a swatch that I was finally happy with, she loved it too.

In terms of the structure of the shawl, Rowena is a big fan (and rightly so) of the many wonderful shawls designed by Melanie Berg. Mel’s design aesthetic is very sleek, and chic, and she is the master of combining sections of delicate lace sections with the clean stripes of garter stitch.We wanted to incorporate that idea into our shawl, and apart from the fact that DKBrioche rib has vertical stripes whereas the stripes created by garter stitch are horizontal, this seemed like a pretty suitable substitute, and hopefully, a very fitting tribute to Mel’s wonderful work.

The shawl was now really starting to take shape.

We talked a lot about colour. Rowena has a particular fondness of earthy tones and bright, bold turquoise. Her home is filled with beautiful artworks that draw from this palette, but we didn’t want to limit ourselves to just two colours, so the decision was made to have the lace sections worked in the turquoise and orange colours from my Sockmatician Edition yarn range, while the plain sections of the shawl, for contrast, were to be worked in the two greys in the range, light and dark.

Just around the time we when we were deciding on the finishing touches, we had both watched a fascinating interview by Suzanne Bryan, introducing us to the beautiful double-knitted work of Christa Newhouse. Many of Christa’s amazing designs feature a flounce, or ruffled edge, and Rowena was particularly interested in the finish that an edge like this gives to a piece of knitting. Obviously, our shawl HAD to have one too!

This is a shawl that would NEVER have turned out the way it has, if I had been working on it alone. It truly is part of both of us, and I couldn’t be more delighted with the results.