Story of a design: Waterlilies

Waterlilies Shawl

This pattern has been a long time coming! I first posted about it more than a year ago, showing the original inspiration:

Japanese design - green

which became:

Japanese design - red

which (eventually) became:

Waterlilies Shawl

I love it when a plan comes together!

Originally, I had knitted the shawl without a border but after wearing it a couple of times, I decided that it really did need a border but couldn’t find an existing one that I liked. So, being me, I decided just to make up my own. That worked surprisingly well, so well in fact that I used the edging for my Celandine shawl as well.

Waterlilies Shawl

I knitted the second sample in Knit Picks Shadow Tonal Lace. It is far less luxurious than the Plymouth Yarn Baby alpaca that I used for the original but, having decided to name the shawl “Waterlilies”, I couldn’t resist the idea of knitting one in yarn which is explicitly designed to “give your knitting the appearance of watercolor”.

Waterlilies Shawl

I always find naming patterns difficult and even asked for help with this one. As chance would have it, it was a comment from Steven that made me think of the flower motifs as waterlilies floating on the undulating yarn-over “waves” (boy, that sounds pretentious!) and the name was fixed. Since Steven has absolutely no interest in a free copy of the pattern, I’ve sent a copy to Giselle whose suggestion was my favourite of those that I received.

Waterlilies is now available from Yellow Ginger Designs and Ravelry.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *