Peak Color: A Cashmere Shawl

My mom used to say, when something was great, “Now we’re cooking with gas.”

Well, I wish she were here so she could hear me say it about this Plucky Knitter yarn and this Peak Color scarf pattern.

I’ve never worked with cashmere yarn before. The first stretch of this scarf has some irregularities in gauge, and I think it’s because I have a Fear Of Cashmere.

Yarn is yarn, right? It has taken me a while to knit cashmere like any other yarn: with a respectful firmness. I need to boss this yarn around, but it’s such tender stuff, so very cushiony and unlike anything I’ve knit with before. It is definitely a treat, and I feel indulgent to be making this candy-colored scarf. Fear Of Cashmere is one of the easier phobias to overcome, I find.

These colors. Pastels are nowhere to be found in my wardrobe, but maybe I need to think about them.

And these colors do seem to show up around here, these days.

Of course, I keep thinking about that lone blue stitch. Way to dissent! Stand firm, blue stitch! You be blue!

I’m done with this section, which was a piece of peach cake.

The next panel, Garter Stitch Triangles, really ought to be called Garter Stitch Triangles That Sneak Up On You. Took me a full episode of The Americans to get my groove on.

The Small Solace of Thinking Pink

When I started this scarf, I mentioned that pink is not a color in my wardrobe, that knitting these pastels was out of my comfort zone.

Well, I take it all back. I’m here today to tell you that in a week where everything was upside down, out of order, wrong, these colors have been a balm. The only comfort zone I’ve found, watching the news—the crushing, infuriating, horrifying news—was in knitting these simple rows, these pale colors.

When I think pink, I see my sister at my wedding, the one of three bridesmaids who gleefully wore the pink dress. She was a ruffled cupcake.

I feel the pink fingers of my baby boy, spread across the palm of my hand.

I inspect the inside of a translucent shell, handed to me by small Clif during the beach trip when he announced he was going to collect all the shells.

I hear the delighted screeches of the two girls who ride by my cottage on their pink bikes, wearing pink helmets.

And, of course, I think of Miss Prescott in Funny Face, the fashion magazine editor who knows it all. “Here it is! Here is our theme! Here is our answer: pink!”

This pattern, Peak Color, caught my eye because it called for knots in each end of the scarf. I’d never seen such a thing, and I was intrigued by the idea.

Now that I have finished it, with the week we’ve had, it feels right to tie knots in this beautiful yarn.