Inside: The best yarn to use for the Shetland Mosaic Shawl: a Shetland lace shawl worked in Gloss Fingering yarn from Knit Picks.
Your gaze sweeps the stark landscape of the Shetland Islands. Beautiful, small Shetland sheep dot the fields, grazing. Being a knitter, instead of sheep, your eyes see potential shawls.
Shetland shawls are traditionally knit with wool from these hearty sheep. They produce a yarn famous for its softness and strength, a rare combination.
The most delicate shawls are knit with very thin, two-ply yarn spun from the particularly soft neck fleece. Each ply is spun with only a few fibres of fleece, creating a super-fine cobweb weight yarn.
Other gorgeous shawls are knit with lace weight and fingering yarns.
I love the delicacy of lace weight shawls, but I prefer working with fingering weight. So, when I designed the Shetland Mosaic Shawl, I decided to use a fingering weight yarn.
Knit Picks has some lovely yarns that closely resemble Shetland wools. But I wanted something a bit more luxurious.
And even fine Shetland yarn does not compare to the softness of Merino and the beauty and strength of silk.
A Glorious Combination of Merino and Silk
Call me a yarn snob . . ..
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
. . .
Call me a yarn snob, but I love Merino wool. There is nothing softer or more luxurious in the sheep world. The only way to improve it would be to add silk to it for a bit of extra sheen and strength.
Fortunately, Knit Picks thinks like I do and combines a lovely Merino wool with silk to create Knit Picks Gloss Fingering yarn. I chose this lovely combination of Merino and Silk to make my Shetland Mosaic Shawl. The yarn was equally excited to be chosen (I’ll bet you didn’t know your yarn gets as excited as you do when it gets to your house!)
While the silk in this yarn is very subtle, it adds a lovely glow and strength. At the same time, the shawl maintains a similar look to shawls knit with jumper weight Shetland wool, so yarn was the perfect choice.
And, it comes in a variety of lovely colours.
Any one of these would make a beautiful Shetland Mosaic Shawl.
I chose a lighter colour to really show off the lace patterning. If you are going to all the effort of forming beautiful lace, you may as well show it off.
(Doesn’t this lovely model look so in lovely with the Shetland Mosaic Shawl? You can see how cosy she is!
If you want to make the shawl in the colour shown in the pattern (Clarity 27705), you can find it on the Knit Picks Gloss Fingering page. You need four 50 g hanks to make this generously sized shawl. While you’re there, check out the other gorgeous colours that this yarn comes in.
Shetland Mosaic would look amazing in a darker colour too, especially if worn over pale colours to show off the patterning.
If I were to make another Shetland Mosaic Shawl, Il’d choose Blackberry 26580. It might look something like this (please excuse my amateur Photoshop styling).
What Fabulous Colour Will You Choose?
I can’t wait to see what you come up with!
When you make your Shetland Mosaic Shawl, please use the hashtags #MagdaMakes and #ShetlandMosaic on social media. I love seeing people’s in-progress photos as well as photos of finished projects!
So, cast your mind’s eye to a field filled with sheep with colourful, lacey fleeces in Clarity, Blackberry, Masala, Black, Sterling, Navy, Cranberry, Robot, Kenai, Hawk, Bordeaux and Velveteen. Choose your favourite and cast on!