Warm Days, Cool Evenings—It's Shawl Season!
Celebrating a favorite design with kits and a discount
This is the time of year when you want to celebrate the warmth of lengthening days. You don’t necessarily want to wear a jacket. But as the sun starts to set, you’re likely to get a little chilly. That’s when you need a shawl. Something you can roll up and stuff in your bag, ready to unfurl when a cool breeze blows. Something beautiful, but not delicate—just a colorful slice of warmth to drape over your bare shoulders.
This is the time of year I reach for Mezzaluna.
The Design
Mezzaluna is a crescent-shaped shawl. It starts at the center of the straight edge. You knit down and outward with periodic increase rows creating the semi-circular shape. It’s mostly stockinette stitch, with occasional garter stitch ridges in a contrasting color, and a wide border of mosaic knitting.
This is a project just about any knitter can handle. The shaping is all written out, row-by-row. The mosaic pattern is both charted and written out—you can choose the format you prefer. If you can knit, purl, yarn over, slip stitches, and read a pattern you have all the skills needed to make a Mezzaluna of your own.
Mezzaluna was originally released in June of 2020. The pandemic was raging, vaccines were not yet available, and many of us were still hunkered down at home sanitizing our mail and sewing masks. Perhaps because of that timing, I’ve always felt that this design flew in under the radar. Now seems like a good time to re-introduce this shawl.
The Yarn
The Mezzaluna sample was knit with WoolTribe Homegrown Sport. It is 100% Shaniko wool. This is a blend of Merino and Rambouillet grown in California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon by a group of ranchers committed to regenerative farming practices. The wool is Responsible Wool Standard (RWS) and Nativa certified. The fiber is scoured and superwash-treated at Chargeurs in South Carolina, spun at Meridian Mill in North Carolina, and hand-dyed by the women of WoolTribe in North Carolina. This is a yarn created with care for the sheep, the land, and the people involved.
Yes, There Are Kits
My dear friends at WoolTribe provided the yarn for the original sample of Mezzaluna, and they have created kits for this shawl, just for you. The kits are in stock and ready to ship, and they include a free download of the Mezzaluna pattern. Quantities are limited for the Mezzaluna kits; some include one-of-a-kind (OOAK) colorways. If you see one that calls to you, don’t hesitate.
If you prefer to knit with yarn you already own, the Mezzaluna pattern is available through Ravelry. From now until the end of May 2025, this pattern is discounted by 20%. No coupon code is necessary—the discount is automatically applied in the shopping cart.
Last week, I had the strange experience of reading two books at once (one on paper, one in audio), both set in the same place: Maine. Although they are two very different novels, they got a little tangled in my head. But I enjoyed them both, and I think you will, too.
The book I read on paper is Tell Me Everything by the always marvelous Elizabeth Strout.
This novel returns us to Crosby, Maine, the small seaside town where Lucy Barton took refuge from the pandemic with her first ex-husband in 2022’s Oh William! If you’re an Elizabeth Strout fan 🙋🏻♀️, you’ll welcome the return of characters like Bob Burgess, Olive Kitteridge, and more. This is a tender book about love—between spouses, between siblings, between friends, between parents and children, between strangers. In her warmhearted, clear-eyed way, Strout illuminates the different shapes love can take, the pain it can cause, and the solace it can provide.
The book I enjoyed in audio is Heartwood by Amity Gaige.
Valerie Gillis is a 42-year-old nurse who is through-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Two hundred miles short of Mount Katahdin, Maine, the Trail’s northern terminus, she disappears. This is a book about all the ways we can be lost and what it means to be found.
This book is driven by the suspense of a ticking clock. With each day that passes, Valerie’s chances of survival diminish. Increasingly desperate entries from her journal are braided together with the activities of the Maine Game Warden’s Search and Rescue Team. We listen in on interviews with Valerie’s family and those whom she met on the Trail. We feel the mounting exhaustion and anxiety of Bev, the Warden Lieutenant who is leading the search effort.
The audiobook is read by multiple narrators, but this recording skips the insertion of sound effects that so often detract from the story in full-cast audio books. Every voice felt appropriate to the characters they portrayed, and the shift of reader never pulled me out of the narrative.
Things That Caught My Eye…
Yet another reason to find time to go to New York: The Metropolitan Museum is mounting an exhibition of the work John Singer Sargent produced during his decade living in Paris. So much beauty!
If you know me at all, you know I believe public libraries are an important part of the foundation of a civil society. I just watched Free for All: The Public Library on PBS as part of their Independent Lens series. It’s a beautiful documentary about the history of public libraries in America, and the threats our libraries currently face. We must remember that libraries, museums and public broadcasting are all under threat. We cannot take them for granted.
Here’s a quiet and charming reminder of why we do what we do. Thanks to Modern Daily Knitting for pointing me towards this short film.
When this newsletter is published, I’ll be just outside Chicago at h+h Americas, the annual trade show for yarn and fabric crafts. I’m looking forward to spending some time with old friends I don’t often get to meet in person. And I’m hoping to come home with some exciting new yarns to review for you.
Thanks, as always, for your time and attention. Continue the conversation: Do you have a favorite shawl shape? Have you made a crescent shawl before? Are the shawls you like to knit the same as the shawls you often wear? I can’t wait to read your comments.
My local library is screening “Free For All” later this month. I’m looking forward to seeing it and being part of the Q&A following it. Libraries are essential parts of our communities!
Gorgeous shawl! I just bought the pattern 🙂 Thank you for the discount! I’ve knitted so many shawls in so many ways. I’m sure I’ve knitted a crescent-shaped shawl at some point, but definitely not lately. When I worked in an office, I almost always had a shawl nearby if I wasn’t wearing it. Ditto when I went on business trips. The air conditioning in offices and conference centers could be downright chilly. Have fun at h + h!