Let’s Talk Yarn

I’ve been getting some questions about yarn choices for the Super Summer Shawlalong, so let’s talk yarn!

Three of the four featured shawls — Ambarine, Lorelei’s Looking Glass, and Pride Goeth Before the Shawl — use sock weight (or fingering weight) yarn, while the fourth, Slippery Slope, calls for worsted weight yarn.

You’ve got some fabulous options to choose from our #SSSAL official partners, or you may be looking to stash dive. Here are some ideas:

Ambarine

Ambarine uses approximately two skeins of sock or fingering-weight yarn. I knit the original in Invictus Yarns Poetry in Dubloon, a 50% silk, 50% merino blend that gives the shawl a beautiful drape. Its openwork makes keeps it from being too warm in the summer, which makes it a great every-season shawl. The merino content in this yarn means it opens up wonderfully during blocking, and holds its shape nicely.

A 50/50 silk merino blend like Louisiana Yarn Guys’ Provenance would suit this pattern to a tee, and they offer Provenance it a wealth of lovely solids and tonals. My favorite color choice in Provenance might be Keylime, but check back tomorrow and I might say Mauve.

Ambarine also knits up beautifully in 100% merino yarns, and for these I always love Morehouse Farm Merino. Four skeins of their Fingering Weight would make a lovely Ambarine. Can’t you picture it in Rose or Denim?

Sassy Black Yarns’ Fingering/Sock Weight would be a great choice for Ambarine if you’re looking for a variegated colorway like Jamberry or a tonal like Keida’s Purple. Lakisher dyes to order, so be sure to get your orders in quickly!

If you want to get adventurous, Summer Camp Fibers offers their Camp Sock in a fun range of vibrant solids and speckled yarn like Barefoot Battalion and Katie’s Pink.

Lorelei’s Looking Glass

Lorelei’s Looking Glass is a fun exploration of mosaic techniques, ranging from simple to slightly chewy. This shawl is a wonderful way to show off the contrast between two sock yarns or fingering-weight yarns in contrasting colors. In the original, I chose a solid and a variegated yarn that were very different. You’ll notice that color of the solid, Natural, doesn’t appear at all in the variegated yarn, which is a lovely melange of blue, purple, and teal shades. That’s quite purposeful. I believe that mosaic patterns show best when the two yarns are really distinct from one another. If they shared similar shades, the pattern would be a lot harder to distinguish.

If you’d like to make this shawl in the original yarn and colors, that’s Louisiana Yarn Guys‘ Treme Sock, in colors Devious Mermaid and Natural. It takes just one skein of each color, or approximately 800 yards total. If you want to add a little alpaca to your shawl for extra coziness, I recommend Louisiana Yarn Guys French Market Sock, which is available in the same colors.

Yep, Devious Mermaid is the colorway they developed especially for me; I wrote about it last year.

In addition to all the great variegated colors and solids offered by Louisiana Yarn Guys, you can find some terrific combinations of Sassy Black Yarns’ Fingering Weight, or you could do a slightly warmer, heavier version of the shawl in Morehouse Farms’ Sport Weight, mixing a solid and a variegated in any of the other terrific combinations below. The sport weight yarn will work for this shawl because the original was knit at a much larger gauge than sock yarn usually calls for, to make it lightweight.

Pride Goeth Before the Shawl

If you’ve been following the blog recently, you’ve seen plenty of info about Pride Goeth Before the Shawl, since it was just released last month. This shawl uses 400g of fingering-weight or sock yarn to create a large, wrappable shawl in up to 12 colors. (My version uses eight.)

In my version, I used eight 50g minis of Knitterly Things’ Vesper Sock Yarn, in Cherry Red, Golden Yellow, Pure Yellow, Chartreuse, Lime Green, Sky Blue, Deep Blue, and Violet. But the great thing about this shawl is that you can choose your own rainbow! The pattern also includes modifications for working with four 100g skeins (standard, full-size sock yarn skeins) or twelve 20g or 25g mini skeins, such as you might have from an Advent Calendar.

This shawl would be lovely worked in Sassy Black Yarns’ new mini skeins of sock yarn, or four favorite colors from Louisiana Yarn Guys, or a rainbow of eight of Morehouse Merino’s 2-Ply Sport Weight skeins as below (because it’s knit on larger needles, this slightly heavier yarn still works).

Slippery Slope

Finally, we have a worsted-weight option for a warmer shawl. Slippery Slope is the perfect shawl to show off that one skein of absolutely wonderful yarn — that long gradient, or fun variegated, or self-striping yarn that you fell in love with in the skein but weren’t sure what to do with.

In the original, I paired Red Heart Boutique Unforgettable with Malabrigo Worsted, which goes to show the huge range of yarns this shawl can work with!

I would love to see a version of this shawl knit up in Morehouse Farm’s 3-Strand Worsted and 3-Strand Variegated. Don’t you think Aspen and Chartreuse would be gorgeous for fall?

Louisiana Yarn Guys Highland Worsted is another great choice for this shawl; and Sassy Black Yarns offers a range of colors in their delicious 100% Peruvian Highland Wool.

Any way you choose, it would be hard to lose. This pattern would really showcase yarns like Noro Kureyon or Silk Garden, Freia Ombre gradients, or Apple Tree Knits Plush. (Apple Tree Knits is going out of business, so there’s a sale on over there right now if you want to snap up some gradient yarn). Pairing any of these with a solid worsted-weight yarn of a similar construction and density will give you a wonderful shawl. You could also pick two solids; just be sure to pick two colors that contrast strongly.

I’ve been excited to see some of your yarn choices already on the Facebook and Ravelry Super Summer Shawlalong groups, and I’m looking forward to seeing many more as we kick off the #SSSAL this Saturday!

Our Cast-On Party runs from 11am-12:30pm Pacific Time this Saturday, July 23 on Zoom. Just click the button below to join in!