Making the World Cozier - One Shawl at a Time

I love shawls. I find them cozy and elegant and feminine and graceful. They are one of the handiest and most versatile garments in the world. They can keep you warm, make you feel special, and make you look elegant. They are great for wrapping up babies, comforting unhappy children, covering up snoozing gentlemen, and bundling up odds and ends that need to be moved somewhere. You can wear them, toss them on the back of the sofa, fold them over the foot of the bed, tuck them in the back seat of the car, spread them on the grass for an impromptu picnic, snuggle under them, cover the bird’s cage, fling them over the piano, make shade by hanging them from tree branches, and change into your swimsuit under them.

Shawls are wonderful treats and a girl just can’t have too many. I’m on a mission to make the world a cozier place, one shawl at a time.

This is one of my very first shawls. It is made from a soft blue-violet mohair and is just a large triangle. I started at the bottom tip and knitted up, knitting the Arrowhead Lace edging as I went. I tried out several patterns - Little Leaf, Lilac Leaves and Traveling Vine. It is a large, very warm shawl which now belongs to my friend Terry.


This triangle shawl is made of a lovely teal silk from Webs in Northampton, MA. I knit it on the bias from the top down, increasing at each end and on either side of the center seam. It is a lovely shawl for summer or over sweaters in the spring and fall. The pattern isn’t complicated - just stockinette stitch with occasional bands of K2,YO and a panel of K2,YO repeats. The edging is Old Shale. It belongs to my sister Lisa.





This was my first rectangular shawl. I made it from four strands of very fine laceweight yarn mostly bought from eBay - it is a combination of silk, alpaca, and mohair and I knit it in a simple basketweave pattern. It lives on the back of the daybed in my office and is my favorite shawl for wrapping up in while I work on chilly late summer mornings.

The next shawl I made I do not have a photo of. It is made of a breathtakingly soft real English mohair and is a Faroese shawl modeled on the ones shown in Knitter’s Magazine’s Shawls and Scarves. It now is in Houston and belongs to my friend Sharon.


This is one of the most beautiful shawls I ever made. It is made from double strands of a softly variegated 50% silk/50% cashmere yarn that I bought on eBay from a vendor in China. I couldn’t read the labels when it arrived but the feel is just luscious. It is a long rectangle, the center panel is Ostrich Plume and the border is Old Shale. The more I handled it, the softer and more lustrous it became. It now is in Pittsburgh with my sister Beth.

So that is an introduction to my mission to make the world a cozier place - one shawl at a time.

Thanks for reading.