PRIMA

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Meet PRIMA, my latest design release. You can find the pattern here.

PRIMA is a very special piece for me for several reasons. It is the first complete piece I’ve designed since the pandemic started. I picked up the yarn at the Rose City Yarn Crawl on March 8th from Heather of Sew Happy Jane at my LYS Knotty Lamb. I instantly fell in love with these yarns and colors – Sassy Ballerina for the Bouncy Fingering and Ballerina for the Magic Mohair. Typically I go for either grays or vivid, bright colors, but something about this really spoke to me. Little did I know how soothing it would be while working with it.

PRIMA will always be the first piece I designed with Heather’s yarns and that makes it a very special piece because I plan to create many, many more. I met Heather in Salt Lake City at the Stitches convention. From the moment I walked into her booth, I was instantly in love with her yarn. It’s hard for me to describe, but she is an incredible dyer and her yarns have somewhat of a romantic feel to them. Beautiful, rich color, but somehow soft at the same time. Very simply put, they bring me comfort. And when I met Heather, I instantly knew I wanted to get to know her and become her friend. She is delightful. Please do yourself a favor and check out her amazing line of hand-dyed yarns.

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PRIMA will also be the piece that transformed my design style and objective. I haven’t designed a shawl in a very long time, mainly because the shawls I wanted to knit and design didn’t fit the aesthetic I was going for at the time. I have been designing for a very specific aesthetic, mainly because it was my job, but also because I love the aesthetic. I also think I kind of got stuck there. Designing this shawl cracked open something in me as a designer. I realized as I was working on PRIMA, that I need to start designing for ME. I need to start creating pieces that really speak to me personally, pieces that I really want to knit and to wear or give as gifts. The cool thing about designing a shawl that starts with a 3 stitch garter tab is that you get to design on the fly and make decisions as you go. There is something very freeing in that process. Unlike a sweater, you pretty much need to have it all mapped out before you cast on.

And PRIMA will always be my COVID19 piece. At the height of my stress, terror at the realization of what was happening and the initial grief of the loss of life as I knew it, it is the piece that helped me get through that moment in time. Knitting PRIMA gave me focus and let me concentrate on something other than our new reality. It gave me time and space to process it all and allowed me to escape. And it gave me hope. Hope is what keeps me going. Hope is what I cling to. Hope that we can make it through and make it past this pandemic, and hope that we can come out on the other side truly appreciating all of the amazing people we have in our lives. I know that things that used to matter to me before, trivial things, just don’t any longer. I hope that I will remember that and make significant changes in my life for the better.

I hope you enjoy knitting PRIMA as much as I did and I hope it brings you comfort in this unimaginable time we are all going through right now. I send so much love. Please be safe and well.

Shellie