I am so happy/nervous/excited/anxious to announce the release of my most recent pattern, Sarah! This one is very special to me (hence all the mixed emotions) because it is named after the person who first introduced me to the world of fiber arts as a small child— my Granny. She was the person I went to when I needed comforting, which is why this cozy shawl reminds me of her; it’s my go-to shawl when I need something warm and comforting to wrap around my shoulders.

I’m not going to lie; this was my first time designing a crescent shawl and I had a complete freak out when I took this thing off my needles. I didn’t realize that most crescent shawls look like a malformed humpback whale prior to blocking. This is exactly why knitting friends are the best! One of mine sent me a photo of a well known designer’s crescent shawl prior to blocking and it had the same weird shape, which she assured me would block out. She was right, as usual. Because of the need for heavy blocking to achieve the crescent shape, protein based fiber is highly recommended for this pattern. One of my testers tried using acrylic and was unable to get it to block into the specified shape and ended up blocking it into a bottom up triangular shawl, which looked very nice but wasn’t what it was designed to be.

Sarah is a top-down crescent shawl with alternating sections of 2-color garter stripes and 2-color brioche. The amount of brioche rows halve with each section, so the section with the longest length has the fewest rows of brioche, making this a perfect shawl for anyone wanting to learn to knit brioche flat! The finished size of the shawl is roughly 62″ (157.48 cm) long and 14″ (35.56 cm) tall. Oh, and the best part about this shawl?! It is reversible! Can you guess which of the above photos shows the “wrong side” of the shawl?

The sample used two skeins Fierce Fibers Buxom yarn, which is a deliciously squishy MCN blend. The main color is the “Sophist” colorway and the contrasting color is “Grit”. Yes, this is the same yarn my last pattern used and I do have a love affair with this yarn. The dyer is local and her colors are always spot on. I have never been able to walk past her stand at a fiber festival or at one of the local stores who keeps her yarn stocked without making a purchase. The pattern only used a little over half of each of these massive skeins, so smaller skeins of worsted weight yarn can be substituted as long as close attention is paid to the yardage—you will more than likely need two 100g skeins of any other worsted weight yarn and will have some leftovers of the second skein for another project. 

Approximate yardage required:
-MC used approximately 245 yds (224 meters)
-CC used approximately 230 yds (210.3 meters)

Granny passed away in August 2013 after losing her battle with lung cancer. As is often the case with this particular type of cancer, her symptoms had gone unnoticed or were ignored as being a common ailment until the cancer had already progressed to “end stage” and spread to other parts of her body. Lung cancer causes more deaths worldwide than any other type of cancer, yet research for it remains to be one of the most underfunded. In memory of my Granny, I am donating 30% of every sale of this pattern to the Lung Cancer Research Foundation, a scientific grant program that provides funding for innovative research focused on the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and cure of lung cancer. I chose this charity because they work globally, not just in the U.S., and because of the transparency with how funds are used.