Meet the Merin shawl. A two-colour shawl using laceweight yarn with lots of garter stitch and a small palette of lace stitches.
The yarn I used is the gorgeous Gretchen Heavy Lace by Posh Yarn. Posh Yarn don’t make repeatable colourways but they’ve got some lovely colours of Gretchen Heavy Lace in their update on Sunday. Check out the shop.
I love to use variegated yarn but often this can overwhelm a stitch pattern. I’ve used a variegated yarn paired with a bolder semi-solid, so it allows the colours to shine yet still allows the pattern to come through.
The sample has been made using a heavy laceweight but you could take the yarn thinner or thicker at the same gauge (it will just have a different drape). Of course, you can alter the gauge and use larger needles to get a similar drape whilst using a fingering /4 ply but you will need more yarn than recommended.
Merin is a kite-shaped shawl and when I was trying to choose a name for the pattern. I was playing about with alternative names for a kite (the bird). I’d typed in Merlin but missed the “L” out and wrote Merin instead. It stuck; so that’s the convoluted origin of the name.
Merin is written for 4 different sizes. The sample is the second size. There is a point in the pattern (at the end of the increases) where you can check your yarn usage and change to a different size by working extra repeats (or maybe take it back a repeat, if you’ve misjudged your gauge). Basically, there’s plenty of scope for adjustment in the pattern.
When I was taking the photos for this I had a little help from my furry friend. She wanted to model too. I started to have fun too, so here’s an outtake of me and my little friend.
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