Flint structures: walls, cottages, houses and churches, are one of Norfolk’s most distinctive architectural features (Norfolk in the UK). Flint is a hard silica mineral that occurs in abundance throughout the area.

Field flint refers to sometimes unworked flint pieces, or cobbles that can be collected from fields and beaches and used to build with. In building, the flints are often laid in patterns, intersected with brick courses, to form Norfolk’s iconic flint building style.

Construction notes - some things to think about

There are three main construction elements to this shawl:

• Asymmetric triangle Shape – this is achieved by a two-row pattern of increasing/decreasing stitches at the beginning and end of the rows, kept going throughout,

• Brick courses – made up of garter stitch and yoyok2tog rows

• Flint courses – made up of w&t/short row shaping around alternating markers, placed along the row.

The first few sections of the pattern will explain these elements in detail, and the pattern will take you through how to complete a shawl using 200g/760m - 800m of
4-ply.

If you have not worked with w&t/short row shaping before, the pattern provides advice.

However, once you feel confident with these construction elements, feel free to do your own things – mixing the sections in whatever order you want, and using as many colours as work for you.

More about the yarn Over the past year, living and designing in my lovely Norfolk, I’ve met some amazing people in the local crafting community including two dyers: Aviva Leigh of Colours of Norfolk and Charley D of Noodle Soup Yarns.

Aviva’s yarns are dyed from traditional and plant based dyes: indigo, woad, madder, lac (for example), and her yarns really work well with the deep traditional regional element of Knorfolknots’ designs.

These yarns have been used for the shawls featured in the first 8 shawl pics shown here.

Charley uses more contemporary dyes and a space dying approach for much of her yarn. Charley has a great eye for colour blending and her yarns are fabulous to use to really rock the look. You can see an example of a FF in Noodle Soup Yarn in the pic beautifully modelled by her gorgeous dad (who is really much happier than he looks here LOL).

I’m also delighted to feature pics of beautiful FF shawls sent to me by other FF shawl knitters. Sadly not all of them have links to Rav projects, so I’m not entirely sure what yarns have been used, but I am stunned by the amazing colour combinations shown here.