On a Lark (for Juneteenth)

 I am still knitting, but I spent a big chunk of my knitting time at the beginning of this year working on my Alabama Chanin dress - which I'll share eventually. 

In the meantime, I worked on a few other things and finished this shawl a couple of weeks ago.

It's On a Lark, by Anne Lindquist. It was one of the "free" patterns from this year's Rose City Yarn Crawl. 

It was my first time to do the whole yarn crawl (back in March) with my cousin Jen, who is also a knitter, and someone I don't get to see often enough. Chuck did the driving, we took two days for 8 shops, and had a fine time. I bought yarn for three (yes, THREE) projects.  I hope we do the yarn crawl again; it was really wonderful. The shops were great, even though there were ALMOST too many people in some of them. There was even a map that shared spots for meals, coffee, and stores and other diversions for the non-knitter who was along for the ride. So it turned out not only to be a great tour of Portland yarn shops, but also of Portland neighborhoods. 

This pattern was the featured pattern at For Yarn's Sake, a really terrific yarn store in Beaverton, Oregon. (Each shop on the tour had a free pattern for those who made a purchase at their shop during the yarn crawl.) I went back on Sunday to this store, since we were staying nearby, and bought the yarn. The original design was in yellows and a bright pink. It was beautiful, but not a good color for my skin or my wardrobe. The pattern called for an assigned pooling yarn, so it took a while to find one that I liked, that had a coordinating yarn I was happy with as well. 

The Assigned Pooling technique "invented" by Dawn Barker, uses the yarn as a cue to knit a special pattern stitch. Whenever I came to that "crispy chicken" shade in the Chicken of the Woods yarn, I'd knit either a texture stitch, bobbles, or floret cluster. The assigned pooling yarn was alternated with a more "plain" yarn, which was also used for the ruffle. I love the ruffle on this, by the way. 

I finished the shawl/scarf on the plane to Montgomery, where we were headed for a Juneteenth celebration at the Equal Justice Initiative. It was my goal to wear this to the concert celebrating Juneteenth, as part of the dedication of the Monument to Freedom at their new sculpture park. This was an amazing event - I don't have pictures of me wearing the shawl, but it's worth clicking the link to see pictures of the event(s) and the monument.  It was a huge privilege to be included in this occasion (thanks to my daughter). And it was very nice to have my shawl in the very air-conditioned auditorium on Wednesday night.  By the way, the Legacy Sites in Montgomery, Alabama, are worth a special trip. I really believe it's a trip every American should take. 

Back to the shawl - 

On A Lark

• 2 skeins Madeline Tosh - Tosh Merino Light in Matcha, 1 skein in Chicken of the Woods (420 yards hand-dyed superwash wool)
  
• Size 4 needles (in hindsight, might have chosen 5's as the pattern specified)
• On my Ravelry page here