Pinewood Lake is a top-down, triangular shawlette that was designed specifically to showcase hand-dyed or handspun yarn in all of its glory. It’s a quick knit in worsted weight that would be perfect for gift giving, since you could start it now and be finished well in time for this holiday season.

Pinewood Lake is also a perfect “first lace” shawl as well, since there are lots of detailed instructions that walk you step-by-step through the process of knitting the shawlette.

I was inspired to design this shawlette after spinning my first real skein of yarn using a drop spindle. It had enough texture and color variation that I knew I’d have to go with a simple pattern to showcase the yarn itself. I also thought about all of the pretty single skeins of sock yarn I had collected that were a bit too variegated for an all-over lace pattern but that were begging to be shawls nonetheless.

The Pinewood Lake pattern includes both charts and full written out instructions for those of you who prefer not to use charts.

Although the handspun yarn used for the sample pictures (the aqua colored shawl--I used Dragonfly Fibers Polwarth/Silk Roving in the Titanium colorway) is a worsted weight, Pinewood Lake would look lovely in any weight. The size is very easy to customize by working more or fewer rows of the Stockinette Body section. For example, for the deep purple shawl pictured, I used Dream in Color Jilly, a fingering weight yarn, in the “My Fair Lady” colorway. I worked 60 more rows of stockinette than the worsted weight pattern size, on US 6 (3.75 mm) needles, in order to achieve the size shawl reference above. And I only used about 375 yards (343 m), which is well under the yardage of most single-skein sock weight yarns. A link to a fabulous Triangular Shawl Calculator which will enable you to maximize your yardage for any weight is included.

So here is your opportunity to use that special skein of variegated yarn that you bought just because it was really, really pretty and had all of your favorite colors! Or use a textured, thick-and-thin yarn. You could even alternate stripes on the body and then switch to a complimentary solid a few rows before the lace border begins.