Nature is both destructive and creative. When my home town of Christchurch, New Zealand was struck by a series of devastating earthquakes beginning September 4th 2010, the entire CBD was cordoned off from public access as the many damaged and collapsed buildings were demolished or repaired. Large swaths of residential Christchurch were left ruined and uninhabitable, forcing people from their beloved riverside houses and gardens to more seismically stable ground.

As we all struggled to work through the extraordinary shock that nature had unleashed upon us, it occurred to me that nature would also provide the first pioneer of those demolished building sites, collapsed buildings and abandoned houses; in the form of weeds.

Never before in my life has a weed been so welcome. In a matter of weeks weeds began to populate once well kept streetscapes in all their prolific glory and abandon. This lace shawl celebrates the raw beauty of nature, both destructive and creative, in the form of the weed. Wrap it around you and contemplate your relationship with the natural world, and whatever experiences it serves up to you.

The charts for this shawl include rows where there are a large number of consecutive knit stitches. Thanks to the lovely people at knitty, I have made available the same charts, which I have annotated with the consecutive knit stitch counts, for your knitting convenience. They are available here from my website: M.A.M