Sunday, May 06, 2007

Heartland Shawl

This is Evelyn Clark's Heartland Shawl, published in the winter 2007 issue of "Wild Fibers" magazine. It was the winner in a contest for Buffalo Gold fiber. Written instructions are in the magazine and you can e-mail Buffalo Gold for the charts.

I'm a big fan of Evelyn Clark, and I normally don't riff on her patterns. But I did on this one.
  • I didn't have any Buffalo Gold but I had a pile of this unidentified wool (maybe washable wool) from a thrift store. I used US7 needles with it.
  • I knit seven (maybe eight, I lost count) repeats of the Bison Tracks pattern; the original called for four. One of the beauties of recent Evelyn Clark shawls is the ability to add or reduce the number of repeats and still come out with a great shawl. The shawl is 45 inches long from the center neck to the center point.
  • All of the double decreases specified are left-leaning, which I think detracted from the pattern. So I changed some of them to right-leaning decreases. In the River of Life border, I changed the left-leaning double decreases to centered double decreases. To accommodate all of this, I recharted the pattern.
  • I made the second half a mirror image of the first half instead of a straight repeat of the first half. It made a difference in only a few places but felt more symmetrical to me.
  • I added a small bead at the points of the border, borrowing the idea from other Evelyn Clark shawls. I think it helps the point stay pointed a little better. And I like beads. The bead color is black diamond luster, which I think complements the turquoise (turquoise is a hard color to match, so I went for complement instead of match).
And I think the turquoise shawl and red lace-leaf maple complement nicely.

5 comments:

Bridget said...

It's just beautiful, and the red maple provides an excellent photo op.

Sara said...

Beautiful Sue! And thanks for the details on the changes you made. I have this on my *list* of shawls to do, so I will note your alterations.

Sande Francis said...

Oh, I love that color! Now which part of the design is supposed to be the buffalo tracks? I couldn't decide. :) Great job!
sandeleh@sbcglobal.net

SYLVIE said...

How very pretty! Love the color!

Denise in Kent, WA said...

Great picture of the Heartland Shawl! I've been combing the web for a photo and was beginning to get quite frustrated. There isn't one on the Buffalo Gold web site, can you believe it? Anyway, your shawl is beautiful and the comments about the pattern interesting. Thanks!