Let's Hear it for the Shawl

A few days ago, the lovely Loraine of Woolly, Madly, Deeply interviewed me for her blog, which was a rather fun exercise for me!  She asked several questions that had me really thinking about what and how I design.

One of them was "What inspires you?"

I get inspiration from so many different sources that it was really hard to answer that question!  Let's look at this shawl (which coincidentally is my newest release with Knotions.

photo by Edsgar Portrait Studio for Knotions

Last year, everywhere I went, every home decor magazine and many pretty pictures I saw on Instagram, had planters that looked like old fashioned bird cages.  I adored the look, but try as I might, my black thumb meant that after a few weeks of having planters filled with pretty succulents or greenery, I had cages filled with dying leaves and brownery instead of greenery.

So, I decided to knit myself one. (Actually it turned into several!)

Aviarium started with my wanting to make something akin to this...

but in knitting!

The elements I really wanted to capture were the straight lines of both the upright bars and the bands around the cage, with the leaves and flowers peeking out from between them.

photo by Edsgar Portrait Studio for Knotions

But as any designer will tell you, one of the hardest things about designing a patterned shawl is figuring out how to get those increases into the pattern without interrupting what the patterning is trying to say. 

To solve that I combined two different types of shawl shaping...a regular progression of increases along the spines (the upright bars) and a large series of increases like you would find in a Pi-Shawl between the bands that run around the cage.

You would think that would be it...but it turns out that I had more to "say" about those birdcages and plants...there will be more of these types of patterns in different shapes (because those cages come in all sorts of shapes and sizes) over the next year!

You can get Aviarium from Knotions or on Ravelry.

If you want to learn more about different shawl shapes, Shawl Star now includes 43 recipes for creating your own!  Using the affiliate link means I get a small percentage of the sales price, but you do not pay a single penny more for the ebook!

Until next time...Happy Knitting!

~M