On a shawl soapbox

I have very strong opinions about shawls.

At the start of my pandemic-driven knitting renaissance, I tried knitting a shawl for the first time — it was the Breathe and Hope shawl created for Local Yarn Store Day. I was so excited to try something brand new to me, I ordered a kit from my local yarn store and I was rearing to go.

I don’t know if the pattern was too complicated for someone who just barely learned her knits from her purls, or if I would have done better with more visual instructions over those written, but I hated how my shawl turned out. Weirdly long but also narrow, it was more akin to the triangle scarves that were popular when I was in high school than what I pictured a shawl to be — something I could drape across my shoulders and have it cover my whole back. It was tucked away in shame shortly thereafter and later frogged out of spite.

A few months later, I decided to try another shawl pattern. The Deathly Hallows shawl from the Harry Potter knitting book I got for Christmas boasted this gorgeous lace pattern with beads, and I could see from the photos that it was the massive, drapey wrap of my dreams.

Sadly, it was the stuff of nightmares instead. The pattern relied quite heavily on charts, which as I mentioned in a previous blog post are about as intuitive as eating melted ice cream with chopsticks. I had to frog the shawl about a dozen times after misreading the pattern, even trying to colour-code the different sections and stitch symbols didn’t work. Eventually I threw in the towel on this project as well, resigning myself to the idea that maybe shawls were out of my scope after all.

Then along came Stephen West, prolific knitter, pattern designer, and expat yarn store owner in Amsterdam. I saw a spot advertising his upcoming Mystery Knit-Along (MKAL), Shawlography. An annual tradition for 12 years, the Westknits MKAL sees Stephen guide participants through a shawl pattern, revealed in weekly installments, holding your hand the whole way through with detailed written instructions and companion video tutorials. After poking around his YouTube channel and some enthusiastic cajoling from a fellow knitter on Instagram (hi, Julia!) I felt ready to, as Stephen says, “say yes, don’t stress.”

The first section of the pattern came out yesterday and I’m already feeling way more comfortable with it than any other shawl I’ve tried previously. It helps that in addition to Stephen’s calm and schoolteacher-like intonation, he’s clearly passionate about embracing the learning process wholeheartedly, warts and all.

I can’t wait for next week!