There’s a first time for everything. Usually when I design, I go looking for charts that inspire me as a starting point. For this shawl, though, I saw two charts in Melissa Leapman’s excellent The Knit Stitch Pattern Handbook as I was reviewing it for Knitty, and was instantly inspired to pull out the graph paper and pencil to combine them. Using the concepts I taught in my Plug+Play Shawl classes, I concocted Birdhouse in Your Soul, a bottom-up one-piece shawl with a self-finishing edge and pretty i-cord bind off.

Unfortunately, between designing this pattern in 2014, and publishing it 12 years later, the original yarn has been discontinued. Two good substitute yarns from Anzula are Katara, a luxury blend of merino and yak which has a similar gauge and appearance and would be extra warm; and Croquet, a blend of superwash merino and tussah silk with good yardage.

Construction Method: This shawl is cast on at the bottom tip starting with a stockinette tab, and increases each side on every row to create a shallow but very wide shawl.

Yarn substitution notes:
Gauge: Whatever yarn you choose, adjust your needle size so that the stockinette sections of Chart B appear solid when held up to the light.

How to adjust if your yarn is finer than specified gauge: Repeat Chart B until the shawl is nearly your desired width. This will necessarily change your yarn requirements.