Featured Project: VAmom’s (Half) Arroway

VAmom's (Half) Arroway

This beautiful shawl was made by a Polka Dot Sheep customer, VAmom (Ravelry name). The designer is Stephen West, who is known for his unusual shawl shapes, graphic designs and stripes.

VAmom used Madelinetosh Sock in coral and Dream in Color Everlasting Sock in Basalt. She did make a few little modifications to the original pattern, details on her Ravelry project page.

Stephen West’s shawl patterns are ideal for hand dyed yarns. Many feature stripes or blocks of color that allow the hand dyed yarns to really shine. Choosing colors that contrasting often look the best and certainly add to the drama of the design.  Most designs are for fingering weight yarn.

Remember with shawls and scarves you can change the yarn and needle size and you won’t end up with a garment that totally doesn’t fit. It will simply be bigger or smaller than the original. Many of Stephen’s designs can easily be done in a lace (smaller), sport (bigger) or DK (little bigger than sport) weight yarn. You will want to swatch to see what needle size to use and what your fabric will be, the gauge can also tell you something about the final size. My point is don’t be afraid to try substitution of yarn weights and gauges for this type of project.

This particular pattern is not available at the moment to everyone as it is club exclusive. However, I encourage you to take a look at his patterns over on Ravelry or his personal site, westknits.

Thank you very much to VAmom for allowing us to feature her beautiful finished project. All pictures were used with her permission.

One last look….

Remember, we love to see our customers’ projects made with the yarn they purchased from the PolkaDotSheep. Share them in our Ravelry group, bring them into the shoppe if you are in Whitefish, or tell us about them via e-mail through the PolkaDotSheep address (found in the about us section). We might feature them here on the blog.

Have you joined the shawl craze? I sure have as I have three very different shawls on the needles right now.

~Angela M.