Pudding stone is a unique and beautiful rock conglomerate found throughout Michigan and parts of Ontario, Canada. It is a sandy colored stone heavily studded with brightly contrasting pebbles of red jasper, white quartzite, semi-transparent quartz, and black chert. The stones originated in a quarry in Ontario, and they were deposited across Michigan tens of thousands of years ago by the glaciers that advanced and retreated over the land during the Pleistocene epoch.

Our Pudding Stone is a triangular shawl with a surprisingly simple (if slightly funky) construction and a charmingly bold aesthetic. Designed to complement six mini-skeins of colorful sock yarn, this knit seamlessly combines two different triangle constructions to create loads of visual interest. The stockinette fabric and simple shaping are easy to execute, while the color changes and directional shifts keep it interesting. Like its inspiration, Pudding Stone blends disparate components and striking color contrasts into a harmonious and solid piece of beauty.

Worked in Oink Pigments’ Oink Sock Pigtails, a hand-dyed Merino blend 100% made in the USA, Pudding Stone is endlessly variable. But no matter which colors you choose, it has a distinct style and sense of place that we think is a fitting tribute to a unique bit of North American geology.

Yarn and Yardage. Pudding Stone is designed for Oink Pigments’ Pigpen, a choose-your-own set of 6 mini skeins of their colorful Oink Sock yarn. Each mini skein (or Pigtail) in a Pigpen is 105 yards. Pudding Stone incorporates most of 6 Pigtails, or approximately 600 total yards of fingering weight yarn.

Needles. We recommend using a circular needle to work Pudding Stone because of the large number of stitches at the midway point of the shawl, and because the color transitions require the knitter to work two right-side rows followed by two wrong-side rows. Circular needles accommodate the wide fabric and allow you to slide the stitches to the other end of the needle to simplify working the color transitions.

Modifications. Mods are a bit tricksy with this design, but possible. The shawl basically boils down to two equally sized triangles. If you use less than half your yardage for the first (increasing) triangle, you should have enough for the second (decreasing) triangle, so you can keep increasing the first triangle until you have just a bit more than half your yarn left. Pudding Stone also could be worked in garter stitch rather than stockinette for a slightly narrower and bouncier variation.

Notions. Two or more stitch markers and a tapestry needle

Techniques. Knit (k), purl (p), yarn over (yo), slip slip knit (ssk), knit two together (k2tog), purl two together (p2tog), and knit three together (k2tog).

Instructions. The pattern includes fully written instructions.

Pudding Stone MFS! As of August 2018, you get two versions of Pudding Stone for the price of one! In collaboration with Michigan Fibre Studio, we’ve created a modification of this lovely shawl that is designed for one full skein of sock yarn plus 75 grams of any other sock yarn--mini skeins, micro minis, leftovers, scraps, etc. We recommend one skein of Why Knot Fibers’ Siren (cashmere!) plus whatever you have on hand that you love. This version is available in the Pudding Stone MFS .pdf.