I started knitting this shawl at a Primate conservation conference in Peru, where I was asked to speak about primate conservation in the ACP-Copallín, the conservation area I work with. The more I knit the more I thought about the many strong women in Primatology who have made the field what it is today. Jane Goodall is of course one of the most famous for her work with Chimpanzees. For me personally I think reading her story as a child set me on my path to become a field biologist.

This shawl is what I would give Jane Goodall as a present if we here friends. In many of the photos of her you can see her in shawls and wonderful sweaters. The shawl is colorful but not terribly bright, and made of recycled silk.

Yarn
I was in a store that sells imports from Nepal, when I saw this yarn. I didn’t buy it when I first saw it even though I thought the idea of recycled silk was genius. Over then next few days I couldn’t stop thinking about it and went back and bought a bunch of similarly colored balls. I have to say when I started knitting there were several surprise changes in color and texture. Additionally there were several areas where the yarn was broken or knotted.

Pattern Notes

This is a classic garter stitch triangle shawl, with a yo increase at the beginning of every row. I have added drop stitch sections without yo at the beginning of the row. Much of the yarn is furry, but I used the smoother silk in the drop stitch sections. I knitted until I ran out of yarn, and even had to cut bits off the tails, and splice them to the yarn I bound off with.