This story has its source way back in October 2012, when I went to Glasgow for 2 events.  One was Glasgow School of Yarn, and the other was an event being organised at The Lighthouse.  The event had the rather long winded title, Hand-knitted textiles and the economies of craft in Scotland, and was organised by Glasgow University.  However, at this event I was able to meet and talk in person to someone who I had been talking to for ages on Ravelry and Twitter, Karie Bookish.  We "clicked" immediately, and if we'd had the opportunity we probably would have talked all day, but we both had work to do at the event and sadly didn't get that opportunity.

However, a couple of months later, Karie asked if I minded if she introduced me to a friend of hers in Sweden, Anne-Lisa Maigaard.  Anne-Lise has been designing knitwear for a few years, and is currently undertaking textile studies in Sweden focussed mainly on weaving.  Like me, she lives in the country and appreciates all that it has to offer.  After a few emails back and forth between Sweden and Scotland, we got to work.  Or rather, as I feel it has been rather one sided,  Anne-Lise got to work.  I just had to do the fun part of dyeing the yarn.

For the project Anne-Lise had chosen "Earth" as her inspiration for the patterns, and so her first choice of yarn was the Alpaca/Silk laceweight yarn in Chocolate - a soft brown shade.  When Anne-Lise sent me the photo's last week of the prototype, I was blown away with how pretty, feminine and delicate it was.

[caption id="attachment_6206" align="aligncenter" width="353"] Photograph courtesy Anne-Lise Maigaard[/caption]

I do have other photographs, but this is the one Anne-Lise has revealed on Ravelry, so I won't reveal any more at this stage - except to say that what you can't see from this photograph is the beautiful shape which I think is unique in terms of shawl design.  I've certainly not seen another pattern for a similarly shaped shawl.

Anne-Lise put out a request for test knitters on my Ravelry forum, and was immediately inundated with offers to test knit the pattern.  You can follow the progress of the test knitting on my Ravelry group.  Once the pattern is released, I'll make sure you know.  In the meantime, if you want to buy the yarn in preparation for making this shawl, the yarn that Anne-Lise used was the Alpaca/Silk laceweight yarn, and you'll need about 850m for the project.  If you don't like alpaca, then you can substitute it with the Merino/Silk laceweight.  And if you don't get on with yarn as fine as the laceweight, then you could also do it in the Merino/Silk heavy laceweight, but you'll need two hanks.  And for those of you who love your 4ply, you can use that too, but you'll need 3 or 4 hanks of 4ply (depending on meterage) to complete the project.  Personally?  I'm planning to do mine in pure silk.

None of this collaboration would have happened if I hadn't "met" Karie on Twitter and Ravelry, both social media sites, and if she hadn't then thought how well Anne-Lise and I would be able to work together.   So thank you, Karie, for introducing us.  Anne-Lise is planning a trip to Woolfest, and I am really looking forward to meeting her.  Our emails to each other indicate we have quite a bit in common.