This shawl is translating some of the beautiful landscapes of Sierra Nevada into knitted fabric. Summits and valleys, streams and rivers get their interpretations in lace patterns, all coming together in a well balanced modern shawl. Worked at a loose gauge using just two skeins of fingering weight yarn, the piece is airy and light, and very easy to style.

Sierra Nevada Shawl combines garter stitch, two types of drop stitches, and simple lace into a delightfully entertaining knit of the best “just one more row” kind. The design is completely symmetrical which allows to adjust it to almost any available yardage and to increase/decrease the length of a shawl to any desired. Lace pattern is both written out row-by-row and charted, and a video tutorial for the drop stitch is provided. The pattern would work great even if one of the two colors used is heavily variegated. So pick the yarn and watch your very own Sierra coming to life ♡

Size

• Wingspan 87.5” / 222cm + tassels
• Depth 30” / 76cm

Yarn

• Each Color A and Color B: 430yds / 395m of fingering weight yarn
• Sample shawl: Squish Fingering from Farmer’s Daughter Fibers (100% superwash merino, 438yds / 100g), Color A - I•Kiinuttsii (speckled cream), Color B - Theresa (muted pink)
• Get your kit from Farmer’s Daughter Fibers here!
• It’s recommended to use two colors with enough contrast to highlight the details of the pattern

Needles and Gauge

• US 8 / 5mm needles on a long cable or the size needed to obtain gauge of 19 sts and 26 rows in 4” / 10cm in Garter Stitch, blocked
• The gauge can be changed to fit the desired yarn. This will affect the required yardage and the finished size of the shawl
• For any other yarn: use needles at least three sizes up from stated on the label to keep fabric airy and light

Construction

• The shawl is worked from a corner towards the center with increases along one side. Once the middle is reached, symmetrical decreases along the same side shape the second half of the shawl.

• The body of a shawl is created by a sequence of stripes in 4 stitch patterns: Garter Stripe, Single Drop Stripe, Double Drop Stripe, and Mountain Stripe (lace).

• The design is completely symmetrical. All the stripes from the first half of the shawl are mirrored in the second half, but worked in opposite colors. This gives a knitter an opportunity to increase/decrease the length of a shawl by repeating/skipping some of the stripes.

• To adjust the pattern to the available yardage, weigh your before starting the work. Increase until you use up a bit less than a half of either color, whichever comes first. Then start decreasing.

• You can choose to cut the strand of color that’s not in use at the moment or to carry it up along the edge of the shawl. For the sample shawl, yarn was carried along the edge throughout, and cut only before the Mountain Stripes to minimise the number of ends to weave in in the end. Notes on this are added to the pattern.