The butterfly shawl: A harbinger of spring knitting

The butterfly, or papillon shawl, designed by Marin Melchior, has been on my must-knit list for several years. Its beautiful graphic design is stunning, in either bold bright colors or more subtle colors. The triangular shape along with its color shaping lends itself to its butterfly silhouette.

The original shawl is designed to be worked in six colors of fingering weight yarn, with a solid black background, although I recently saw a shawl knit in a worsted weight and was no less impressed. As shown here, one colorway in a multi-yarn is equally beautiful. The benefit of using a multi-color is there are no changing colors requiring a lot of dreaded finishing. Another bonus is that your colors are guaranteed to work together.

The shawl is not for the faint of heart, although is not beyond the skills of an intermediate knitter. The entire shawl is knit in garter stitch, so no purling required. The technique is a series of sections worked in short rows. If you have knit socks before, you are not unfamiliar with it.

There is another project by this same designer is the butterfly cowl which is a perfect project if you want to test the water, before taking the plunge knitting the shawl. It has the same look as the shawl, but in a much smaller cowl shape.

In Sheep’s Clothing is offering kits for both projects. Ordinarily, a class would also be offered at the shop, but in these times, we are offering an online class on Zoom. There are also some particularly good You tube videos available to walk you through.

If you would like to add a little color in your life kits may be found here: https://in-sheepsclothing.com/product/ butterfly-shawl/, or https://in-sheepsclothing.com/product/ butterfly-cowl/.