Sometimes I fall in love with the colors of a yarn in the skein and I feel compelled to create just the perfect pattern to show it off. This was one of those times. Slippery Slope evolved from my desire to see the long color changes in a skein that particularly spoke to me do its thing against a velvety soft, all-but-solid background.

The Slippery Slope shawl alternates elongated slipped-stitch sections with simple eyelets to showcase an eye-catching color-changing yarn against a solid background. Once you get going on this shawl it’s a slippery slope — you’ll want to keep going to see what the yarn is going to do next!

Slippery Slope calls for two worsted-weight yarns: approximately 600 yards of a solid or nearly-solid color for the background, and approximately 250 yards of the contrast yarn, which looks beautiful in a long color-changing yarn or gradient. For the sample, I used Malabrigo Worsted in Black Forest and Red Heart Boutique Unforgettable in Gossamer. The design would work up beautifully using a Noro yarn or hand-dyed gradient for the contrast color, but would also show variegated yarns to great advantage.

Slippery Slope was featured in the February 2022 Knotions along with the Trillium Shawl, the Sayagata Shawl, and the Ogham scarf.