That was my favourite week so far! It was a pretty close result between narrow stripes and colour block and there were so many fantastic comments! Thank you everyone who took the time to vote and especially comment. I read all the comments with great interest. Colour block was the winner with 51% of the votes.
A few people considered that for textured stitches to really shine the colour block option would be better, and I think this is true. I do love narrow stripes but it would be a lot going on at the same time.
Now that there have been quite a few decisions made about the shawl I can really start to focus on the design. My shawl designs usually start with a spark of inspiration which can be from a variety of things. Sometimes it is a particular skien of beautiful yarn (Radiance was like that) or a stitch pattern (e.g. for Câlin I really wanted to incorporate chevrons).
In the case of Elemental Things which is a new pattern I’ll be releasing very soon, it was my desire to capture a mood that led to the design. I was at a cafe in London on a really gloomy February day so it ended up being quite dark and gritty. It was also photographed on a freezing day in November last year which adds to this mood (this one has been in the pipeline for a loooong time!). It ended up being my go to neck warmer throughout last winter and I wore it to work nearly every day.
For the Curious Collective shawl, now that I have some constraints to work with (positive ones) I will be flipping through stitch dictionaries and magazines, letting ideas float in and out, turning them over and upside down and see what takes shape.
I’m not sure what the final poll is going to be yet! I know that is cutting it fine but as it’s the last one I want it to be a goodie. Stay tuned and I will have it up by Monday at the latest.
Elemental Things is a semicircular, lace weight shawl. This sample is knit in MadeleineTosh Prairie.
