A Small Slice of Pi

At the end of last year I started planning out which shawls I would make for the 12 shawls in 2012 challenge. I had many ideas for smaller shawls but still needed to come up with ideas for 2 larger shawl using at least 500 meters of yarn. Last year I struggled a bit with this part of the challenge and only came up with one large shawl. Part of the process of choosing which shawl to make I also like to figure out who I am making it for. Many of the shawls that were made last year were given away, I kept only a couple for myself, I actually like giving my work away that makes it worth doing. The larger shawls I felt needed to be special gifts for special people in my life. So I came up with the idea that I would knit a shawl for the girl who would be the one for my little brother. Little did I know he had actually found "the one" when I started planning this.

The yarn had to be lush and the pattern had to be special. I started looking through my favourites on Ravelry and then through the shawl patterns not in my favourites. I needed one to use at least 500 meters of yarn and I wanted it to be laceweight. Ravelry really has a good system for searches I could add to it which size yarn, how much yarn, needles size, and could even search within certain groups. Most shawl patterns you can usually use which ever size yarn you want and a lot also let you customize the amount of repeats that are done to make them bigger. I ended up picking a shawl that was one of the first I had favourited when I started using Ravelry.

This shawl was designed by someone that wished to honour a great knitting icon - Elizabeth Zimmermann for the anniversary of her 100th birthday. I think I had always known about EZ since I was a child. My mother was always watching PBS crafting and cooking programs and I am certain that she watched her shows while I was young. I fell in love with Sasha dolls which were always shown on her shows. I have this vague recollection of the program. My mother also had a number of her books (these are my books now - thanks Mom), and I had tried reading them but the stories intertwined in the patterns confused me at the time.

EZ's birthday is August 9 and so is my brother's birthday. I knew this was the one I should do. The shawl pattern includes hearts and to me that means love. The shawl is designed on the numbers 8, 9 and 10 for EZ's birthday using EZ's Pi shawl design from Knitter's Almanac. There are also vines in the shawl between the hearts. I estimate that this shawl will be around 60 inches and use about 900 meters of yarn. About half way through the shawl the amount of stitches is 576.

I started the shawl on Jan 1, 2012 as my first shawl of the year. The yarn I chose is Manos del Uruguay's Lace in a cream colour. This yarn is 70% Alpaca, 25% Silk, 5% Cashmere, 2 ply lace weight. It is very soft, loosely plied. As of today I have 13 rows left, my plan is to finish it before the end of the month so it will be the shawl for June.

How has EZ inspired you in your knitting?