100% Chance of Summer Rain
With the weather turning blazing hot it's time to reach for cooler knits and lightweight accessories. Cotton and linen are the epitome of summertime yarns but they can feel a little different to work with if you're used to the bounciness and elasticity of wool. A blend of warm wool and cool plant fibers is a great compromise, and that's what Sirimiri is knit with.
Sirimiri is a top-down triangle-shaped shawl with an all-over lace pattern. The only thing that's not lace is the garter-tab cast-on and three-stitch wide garter-stitch edgings along the top of the shawl. The lace pattern is made with yarnovers and single and double decreases to created an effect of huge raindrops falling from the sky.
What's in a name, you might be asking. Sirimiri is a Spanish word that translates to fine drizzle or light rain. When it rains, it pours, but in this case it's just drizzling lace. Knitting this lace pattern requires a fair bit of concentration, though. I highly recommend you know how to read your knitting and to fix mistakes in lace on the fly. As usual, both charted and row-by-row written instructions are given for the lace pattern.
If you've followed my designs for a while, you might have noticed I try to stay away from having a conventional spine in symmetric triangular shawls. In Grand Fir and Lady of Light, for example, central increases were invisible (done with strand increases instead of yarnovers) but still along the center of the shawl. Sirimiri takes this spinelessness (ha!) a step further: increases are done within a central lace panel instead of along one line.
For this pattern I got to play with a brand new yarn. This spring, Kässäkerho Pom Pom released two new merino/linen yarns, a DK-weight Linnea DK and it's little sister, light fingering-weight Linnea Light that's used in Sirimiri. I have yet to try the DK one although I do have some plans on what to make with it.
Linnea Light is a light fingering-weight blend of 70% organic wool and 30% linen. The yarn comes in 100 g skeins with a whopping 466 m (510 yd) of yarn in each. Because of the high linen content, the yarn takes on a hazy, muted look when dyed. For my sample I used Linnea Light in the colorway Muste ("Ink"). Instead of inky blackness, in this base the colorway looks more like faded jeans.
The bind-off used on the shawl is also something new I'd never done before: an elastic beaded bind-off. It's done the same way as a regular elastic (a.k.a. Russian) bind-off but beads are placed on every other stitch along the bind-off edge. A little tedious and slow, for sure, but the beads add a bit of weight — and sparkle! — to the edge to make it hang nicely. You could also leave out the beads and do a regular elastic bind-off instead; instructions for both are included.
Sirimiri comes in two sizes, written for 1 or 2 skeins of Linnea Light. I've also included instructions on how to modify the shawl size based on the yardage you have. To knit the shawl you need approx. 460 m (505 yd) of yarn for the smaller size and approx. 855 m (935 yd) for the larger version. If you want to do the beaded bind-off, you'll also need 171 beads for the smaller shawl and 231 for the larger. High-quality size 8/0 or 6/0 seed beads are recommended. (I used light gray size 8/0 Toho beads in mine.)
The pattern for Sirimiri is now available in my pattern shops on Payhip, LoveCrafts, and Ravelry (seizure warning). How's the weather where you are? Share photos of your summer rain with the hashtags #sirimirishawl and #talviknits.
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