Still on my kick from discovering a fantastic and very local indie dyer, I cast on the free Zoolandia shawl by Stephen West and DrawFour Designs with a few skeins of Pinnacle Merino Singles from Atelier Yarn.

I had spent time swatching with the yarns and began a few different patterns before settling on Zoolandia because the main yarn is heavily variegated in very striking colours. It worked up well in garter stitch but I wanted to knit something more dramatic and Zoolandia’s slip stitches and yarn overs was the answer.

I followed the pattern as written except that I used a 3.5mm needle instead of 3.75mm, and I swapped in a different yarn on the purl side of the second last yarn over section, and then back again to the original colour on row 95.

I don’t know if I was doing something wrong but on the triple yarn over rows I’d often end up near the end of the row without a suitable number of stitches remaining on the left needle to complete the stitch sequence, but I just finished up the rows either knitting three together or doing two sets of single knits between the yarn overs on the last few stitches before the garter edge and it doesn’t seem to have affected the shape of the shawl.

The picot bind off took a long time and used up a lot of yarn but I like the look of it.

Overall I love the shape of this shawl because it comfortably hugs the shoulders and wraps around with a finished width of 150cm (59″). I also think that this Zoolandia is a great pattern for heavily variegated yarn.

My Ravelry page for this Zoolandia shawl contains my project notes.