I wanted to design a shawl around a garden of tulips. Thus, latticework and a field of tulips.

Next, came the naming ritual, which for me usually involves something super creative like… Field of Tulips :) So, I researched tulips for about 5 minutes to see if they had a really cool latin name, but instead up popped references to the Madness of Crowds…. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delus..., and to take a sentence from this reference: “Among the bubbles or financial manias described by Mackay are the South Sea Company bubble of 1711–1720, the Mississippi Company bubble of 1719–1720, and the Dutch tulip mania of the early seventeenth century. According to Mackay, during this bubble, speculators from all walks of life bought and sold tulip bulbs and even futures contracts on them. Allegedly some tulip bulb varieties briefly became the most expensive objects in the world during 1637.”

Well, with the current craze in knitting, I thought that was an apt names. The pattern is, thankfully, not so expensive.

You can look forward to a study in knitting tulips as I am exploring various ways to shape the tulip in a more 3D manner. Stay tuned here, as pattern variations are underway and will be published in new versions of the pattern. I can feel some cowls coming on as well.