In the Language of Flowers, lilacs symbolize the first emotions of love. In my private vocabulary, lilac-time is synonymous with springtime and I love to remember all the lilacs in gardens and roadsides that I’ve stopped to smell or snip. And who can forget Eliot’s Lady with her bowl of lilacs, or Dickinson’s Firmamental Lilac, or Nina Simone’s rendition of Lilac Wine (“sweet and heady”)?

I wanted to create a shawl that imitated the delicate yet effusive beauty of the lilac, to wear to a garden party or a spring wedding, or to simply swan around the park pretending to be graceful. The construction is something fresh: a square knit in the round from which three triangles grow out, knit flat. The finished shawl is triangular, but the construction allows for details such as the lilac buds that form the collar, the leafy finials at the end of each wing, and of course the central four-petal corolla that will doubtless delight your followers.