Stripanan

First off, thank you all so much for the amazing response to Strata and Line! I have to admit that I was a bit nervous about this collection, as it was the first time I'd self-published anything since late 2011.  That's a long time ago in my design career! But I couldn't be happier with how it's gone, and I have all of you lovely people to thank for that.

(all photos by and copyright Bristol Ivy and Leah B. Thibault)

I wanted to take some time over the next few weeks to talk a bit further about each design of mine in the collection, starting with Stripanan, the shawl with lace edging knit in Brooklyn Tweed Loft.  I don't have it with me now, but I will definitely see if I can find the sketch for this; it's hilarious. (In it, I've drawn a striped shawl, and instead of trying to represent lace on the edging with my dodgy sketching skills, have just written "lace! lace! lace! lace! look at me I'm lace! ooooooh wowee lace!" Pretty classic Bristol.)

Though they all look completely different, the Gemma shawl with Quince & Co., Stripanan, and Thorn with Brooklyn Tweed are all fraternally related to each other; they all start with the same basic concept of a shawl that increases along one edge every other row to create a triangle whose starting point is 45 degrees.  Stripanan takes this one step further by doubling the increase rate once along the way, and Thorn takes it another step by doubling, and then tripling the increase rate.  It's no secret that I love asymmetry, and each of these three shawls offers a different perspective on the shapes that can be achieved with this sort of parabolic increase structure.  (Please believe me that I hated all math except for geometry growing up; I have no idea why I decided going into a career where complex algebraic equations were part of daily life was a good idea.)

So once I had the basic idea for Stripanan in mind, the next step was yarn.  One of the perks of my day job is staring at the walls of yarn at Brooklyn Tweed, so it's no surprise that daydreams about color combinations happen frequently. Foothills and Pumpernickel feature often in these dreams, as I absolutely love the yellow and grey accents in the former and the deep, rich, velvety brown of the former.  It was inevitable that I'd combine the two at some point--plus they look like mint chocolate chip ice cream!

In addition to the color scheme, Stripanan has some other little quirks that I love: the blunt edges at the ends of the lace border, created by the cast-on and bind-off; the single stripes perpendicular to the stripes in the body of the shawl, a sort of pre-border border; the single yarnovers at the top edge that create the shawl's shape.  I love tiny details like those.  I'm definitely not finished playing with this shape or form, but I couldn't be more pleased with this iteration of it.

Stripanan is available on Ravelry here, and can also be purchased with my three other patterns in the collection for a discounted price with the coupon code STRATA.  Leah's patterns in the collection are also available as a whole at a discounted price with the code LINE.

On a side note, I have to give a huge shout out to my friend Becca, who was the brave early morning model for this photoshoot.  I've known Becca since she was teeny tiny, and I am so proud of the amazing woman she's become.  In addition, the girl can shred like nobody's business!