As soon as I finished Ivory Spires, I knew that I needed to work up a 1 skein version that used similar elements. I hadn't had enough of the beads, twisted stitches and lace, I needed more but also less, something similar but smaller.
Abbey Glade took me away from the drama of the coastal shore where Ivory Spires took inspiration. This new design seemed deeper, richer, the depth of the color in the yarn was so natural. It reminded me of the shadows between foliage, perhaps of a quiet glade deep in the woods with the crumbling ruins of a long lost monastery. The remnants of the glass windows broken and glittering all over the ground with plants growing up in between. I wanted to continue the leaf motif and the vertical columns that I had introduced in Ivory Spires, but they needed to change a bit. The foliage needed to be more interspersed with the architectural elements and I wanted to limit the beads to the edging.
I had fallen (and still remain) in love with the Tibetan Dream Yarn from Bijou Basin Ranch that I had used for Ivory Spires. I wanted to use it again but was aware that such high quality yarn had a price point that made it a splurge for most knitters. So it was important to me that this next pattern only use 1 skein of yarn. I also wanted to limit the beads so that a knitter who was less comfortable with adding beads might be more enticed to try them.
I have used this type of shaping before, the shawl is cast on from the narrow end and worked sideways back and forth with increases and decreases to create the shape. Previously I have always worked this main body area with some kind of simple repeat, either garter stitch like Aegaea, or 1x1 ribbing like Sivia.
But for this shawl I really wanted that center section to have some serious patterning in it, to give the impression of these ruins that are overcome with vines and plants. But since the underlying structure of the architecture still remains the pattern needed to have a geometric feel to it. I settled on this combination of a horizontal band of leaf shapes and vertical columns of cables to juxtapose the two ideas of organic versus structure.
Because the shawl is started at the narrow end the increases for the shaping and the border pattern are all worked at the same time. This means no knit on border, it is started and ended with a double knit edging along the narrow end. This also means that the increases and decreases are written into the chart for the main body.
If you can follow a chart you can knit this pattern, the wrongside patterning is limited to twisted stitches and all the rows are charted. However this pattern is only charted, there are no written instructions for the charted areas (during the test knitting phase they were deemed too cumbersome to make it into the final pattern version.)
When you do knit one I would love to see it! You can tag me on Instagram using @meghanjoneslnmp or #littlenutmegproductions, Happy Knitting! Meghan
