This Yarn A Long was the first season where you, the knitter, got to choose which color story you received. Instead of designing one color palette for each shawl, Stephen collaborated with the dyers on two custom palettes. Members received either all warm colors or all cool colors. Undercover Otter, Fru Valborg, and La Bien Aimée were the featured dyers and they all produced some truly stunning colorways.
We debuted our custom base from Undercover Otter called Eventide, which is a delicious blend of merino, yak, and silk. The Undercover Otter Yak Silk shawl is rare specimen in the Westknits shawl family as it features lace. When Westknits does lace, he goes graphic!
Skystorm continued the YAL theme of three-skein fades with a beautifully simple faded design. Skystorm showcased Fru Valborg’s signature style of understated elegance in her dye techniques. Stephen has quite the eye for showcasing hand dyed yarns and is quite clever how he lets them shine in his designs. He always know when to tone things down and when to excite us again with electric colors and surprising construction details.
The final shawl this year was the triangular Slipping Tiles, a graphic statement piece. This design has since progressed into a flurry of other slip stitch designs like Slipstravaganza, Fantastitch, and Painting Honeycombs.
