I pinned a section of the shawl at a time to the ironing board, covered it with a thick washcloth, then pressed with the steam iron. I opted for a steam iron, an ironing board, and a thick towel covering the piece so I wouldn’t totally melt the acrylic.

I needed a source of heat, to lightly melt/soften the fiber, but not too much that I ended up killing the fabric. But because I used acrylic yarn (I have loads of it in my stash), wet blocking was out of the question. Moreover, you want to stretch the stitches out to create the lacy effect. But it was actually pretty easy, consisting mostly of the stockinette stitch, a row of yarn-overs, some binding off, and a decrease row in the pattern repeat.īlocking the piece, on the other hand, was a lot harder! And you really have to because stockinette stitch edges tend to curl under.

I thought this pattern would be somewhat challenging to knit, what with all of the swirls and the lacy effect. Easy to Knit, Difficult Block (At Least for Me) Lichen, a kind of fungus that grows on rocks, trees, and walls, comes in a multitude of varieties, but I think the above photo shows a nice representation of the kind of lichen that might have inspired Larissa’s shawl design.

I really liked it and thought it would be a small enough knitting project that even I, who hadn’t picked up the needles in a while, could manage. When she released the novel under the Cooperative Press imprint, Larissa gave away several patterns inspired by the novel, one of which was the Lichen Shawl. It’s beautifully written, with well-developed characters and a riveting plot set in 10th century Iceland that kept me turning pages well into the night. If you like time-travel romance novels and Vikings, this is the book for you. One of the books I read was Beautiful Wreck by writer and knit designer, Larissa Brown. Beautiful Wreck Inspired the Lichen Shawl On the other hand, while I didn’t feel like crocheting, for some reason I didn’t mind knitting at all (glad I can do both!) and ended up making two small pieces, one of which I describe below. Around the beginning of 2014 and through mid February, I came down with the flu and had bronchitis twice! Needless to say, I didn’t feel like doing much other than watching TV, reading, and sleeping.

Beautiful Wreck by Larissa Brown