Landmark

Clara Yarn’s CVM/Romedale 1.0 was in my hands for about five minutes when I decided it needed to be a shawl. Clara tells the story of CVM, and of the creation of this very special yarn on the Clara Yarn website. As I began to think about the design, my sister Ellen suggested a capital-S Shawl — not fancy, but one that wraps you up in a warm, cozy, at-home-in-winter feeling. It had to be big enough to wrap around your shoulders, but not so big that it got in the way.

I swatched for days that stretched into weeks, playing with textures and shapes, color combinations, and drape. The shawl that I created is a top-down crescent shape, where seed stitch becomes diamonds, and diamonds become a wavy border of flags. The stitches are simple combinations of knit and purl, separated into bands and ending in a border that wants to wave a little.

It’s called Landmark for my sister, after our family farm near Middleburg, Virginia. Of the five of us children, it was Ellen who spent her whole childhood there – surrounded by green fields and our mother’s gardens, nestled among the rolling hills, and enfolded in the world created by our parents, grandparents, and the families that came before them.

Landmark is available to download from Not Plain Jane’s Ravelry Store.

Boxwood

Behind the house there were big, overgrown boxwoods, which at one time must have bordered a path. Their shelter was our playhouse, and so the hat is called Boxwood. Like Landmark, the fabric is simply textured, moving from ribbing to seed stitch to simple diamonds, and then to stockinette stitch for the shaping at the top.

Boxwood is available to download from Not Plain Jane’s Ravelry Store.

As I’m writing this, several days late (a tale for another post), Clara Yarn CVM/Romedale 1.0 is all gone. Another woolen-spun DK yarn will work almost as well. Just make sure it’s a yarn that has something to contribute to the experience!

I’m extremely grateful to the wonderful Purlewe, who took a spreadsheet and page after page of notes and made sure that everything added up;  to Michael Friedrich, Destiny Montague, and Rebecca Speckenbach for letting me borrow their heads; and to Rachel Speckenbach, who knows how to rock a wool shawl on a hot afternoon.