Okay, for me it is ALWAYS Shawl Season! I wear shawls everyday — and I usually have a shawl knitting project going.  But when Spring arrives, I get a little shawl-crazy 🙂 and knitting shawls is particularly joyous when the sun shines and my needles are dancing lace stitches.  

Shawls can be expansive (sometimes called “shlankets — “shawl” + “blanket”) or diminutive (maybe a little crescent that just drapes over the back of your neck ).  And while fine “lace weight” wool or silk or cotton yarn is traditional, we use all sorts of yarn — sometimes in fabulous combinations of weights and colors (which we fondly call our “ferocities”).  So when Springtime unleashes my creativity in spurts and explosions, I go straight to my yarn stash to see who wants to come out and play 🙂

And I found this lovely color-splashed cashmere (yards and yards in these skeins!) that wants to be  3-triangle shawl — one of my favorites to knit and wear. 

And I gathered these with a q’mitl ferocity in mind — probably the most wearable garment shape, the q’mitl is a sort of poncho with incredible drape and versatility.  What will inspire this piece to move further in the design process?  Still a mystery….I need to do some pondering and explore some stitch pattern books….

As I mentioned earlier, I usually (okay, always) have a shawl (or two) on the needles.  This 4-triangle shawl is being knit from 2 dozen mini-skeins! All bunched up on the circular needle, it looks like a flower about to bloom….or maybe a whole Impressionist garden!  It also reminds me of a butterfly just emerging from its cocoon, all wet and wrinkled, before it stretches its wings in the sunlight.  In fact, I call this my Butterfly Scales Shawl.

This crescent shawl was the answer to “what can I do with lace weight alpaca and silk/mohair yarns?”  The black is alpaca and the yellow is silk/mohair — and as the shawl gets bigger, I plan to switch to cobalt silk/mohair and chartreuse alpaca in the same spidery stitch pattern.  This shawl — with its exquisitely fine yarn and wicked double purl-3-together dance move — is best worked in daytime, preferably with good strong sunlight!

But, of course, Spring is not just for shawl knitting!  It is also the time to complete Winter knitting — such as George’s wool vest (which he will be able to wear year-round in our mild coastal Pacific NW climate).  He is a terrific guy to knit for!  Not only does he look so very handsome in hand-knit sweaters, but he wears them all the time!  I already have the yarn for his next sweater — a warm gray gansey-ish pullover.  (He is also a great guy to knit for because he never says “When is my sweater going to be finished — shouldn’t you be working on that instead of knitting that lace shawl?” — and, also, he cooks dinner every night!)