I have been so excited about releasing this pattern I don't even know if I can begin to tell you! I guess I will have to try because I am releasing Palomino Sunset this week and it is my favorite design to date. This design began way back in June when I helped plan the Knitters for Critters fundraiser here in Spokane Washington, a fundraiser supporting Spokanimal our local animal shelter and hosted by Paradise Fibers.
One of the yarn companies that helped to sponsor our fundraiser was Ancient Arts yarn, they have a multitude of great yarn and some of it is organized into colors that are inspired by Shelter animals. The Woof Collection and Meow Collection are lines that come in either DK or Fingering weight and a percentage of every sale is donated to either the Best Friends Animal Society (USA) or the Meow Foundation (Canada). They have such an incredible range of colors it was hard to choose just one to spoil my yarn diet with, but somehow I managed and came home with two lovely skeins of Fingering weight in Prairie Flower.
Now I am a Canadian citizen, I may live in Spokane but I was born and raised in Edmonton Alberta and got my BFA at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary Alberta. So it was a serendipitous affair when I found out that Ancient Arts is not just from Alberta but they are based in Calgary.. seemed like a good match to me! The Prairie Flower color was just so reminiscent of dusk on the Prairie it really took me back to quiet dark rides across the plains while my Dad drove us out to the lake for summer vacation. I love the dramatic color transitions of the yarn from aqua to warm brown, deep mauve and a touch of gold, and wanted to design a shawl that really let the yarn sing while still being something more than garter stitch.
Palomino Sunset is worked with long floats and decreases to create a lovely heart motif that splays out on each side of the shawl. The shawl is divided into three sections with double increases on each outer edge and single increase on either side of the center garter stitch panel. This makes a wide rounded crescent shape that hugs the shoulders, perfect if you were maybe a little nostalgic for a childhood home and needed something warm and soothing to remind you of simpler times. The shawl is worked from the top down and the border is added sideways with a smaller version of the heart motif.
This stitch pattern breaks up the dramatic color shifts and has such a large motif that it speaks through the loud yarn. This pattern works really well with any heavily variegated yarn and since the second skein begins with three rows of the main body remaining you could use two different skeins with great effect.
We recently traveled back to Edmonton to visit with family and friends for the first time in many years and I just knew that this shawl had to come along for the ride. My lovely and talented Sister in Law Chelsea Jones of Vitality Images was the driving creative force behind the photoshoot and found this amazing location to shoot the shawl in. Her lovely friend Caroline was the perfect model (thanks again Caroline! you are as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside) and I think you will agree that Palomino Sunset looks perfectly at home in the midst of the waving prairie grass.
I was particularly thrilled that we took the photos by this run down shack as it really triggered a favorite childhood memory for me of a late night drive out to the lake. It was mostly dark out and my sister and I were looking out the windows at the scenery. When we saw a tumble down shack (which is very common on the prairie) I decided to have a little fun and told her that it was actually a 'ghost shack'. My colorful yarn explained that when a person died on the prairie they were not buried, instead their families would erect a building over top of the body for the spirit to live in. I must have been convincing because I remember it very clearly and she was fairly unnerved, so Ali, I apologize!
Maybe you have some fond memories of the prairie, maybe not, but I hope you enjoy this pattern as much as I enjoyed knitting and designing it.
Since this pattern is going live on Cyber Monday I am having a sale, Buy 1 Get 1 free ALL WEEK! Check out all my patterns here on Ravelry and choose two for the price of one
