Once upon a time, pre-Ravelry, when knitting blogs were more prevalent, Fridays were often alliteratively set aside for showing off finished projects. Today being Friday and all, I thought I’d show you what kept me busy in late May, June, and July.

This year I turned 40, which meant that my two dearest college friends also turned 40. Since I’d never given them any handknits, I thought this seemed like a good occasion to do so.

At the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, I was on a mission: to find six skeins of yarn that could be turned into two Color Affection shawls. The Ashton Studio Arts booth [apologies for the link, which at the time of this writing seems to be down for maintenance], which I’d made a note of last year with this thought in mind, gave me 5 and I found the final skein at Jill Draper Makes Stuff, where the women manning the booth suggested they’d be turning 50 in the near future if I wanted a follow-up project.

Eri’s birthday had already passed by the time I got around to buying the yarn, so I started her shawl first. But Rebs’ was in June, so after only a couple weeks I put Eri’s aside in an effort to get Rebs’ done in time. That did not happen, but it did allow me to make her shawl my main work-in-progress for the Tour de France knitalong. Rebs’ was done and blocked before the end of the Tour, and the knitting on Eri’s was done, leaving only the binding off, weaving in of ends, and blocking to do. We were fortunate enough to see Eri while we were in New York City last month, so I was able to deliver hers in person, always the preferred method of gift-giving.

Eri’s Shawl
Knit in Ashton Studio Arts yarns: Bari in the Bob colorway, D’Oro in Gilded Turquoise, and Lustro in Alexa
May 17-July 28

Photographed in Central Park and later on Eri herself by Rudi:

You can see more pictures on my Ravelry project page.

Rebs’ Shawl
Knit in Ashton Studio Arts Falkland Nylon in Caribbean Sea and Verona in Karen’s Peony and Jill Draper Makes Stuff Esopus in Ivy.
June 7-July 24

Photographed at my parents’ house and on me:

Additional photos are on my Ravelry project page.

A couple thoughts about the pattern and yarn choices:

First, I picked the Color Affection pattern because I’d made one for myself two years ago and wear it all the time in the cooler months. I was hopeful that in the right colors, Rebs and Eri might find theirs similarly useful.

Eri’s favorite color is peach and when she and I were at the New York Sheep and Wool Festival last fall, I noticed she was drawn to lots of bright blues. I’d wanted a shawl that would be reminiscent of flowering trees against a spring sky, so went with brown for the third color, which also happens to be a color she wears a lot, I’ve noticed.

Rebs has always preferred deeper, but still bright colors, and something that represented her beloved Washington scenery was what I was going for. I knew I wanted a pine green for the rainforest and a purple for her Cascade mountains and a blue for the Columbia River and I think I was pretty successful.

Also, it turns out that while not intentional, I’d subconsciously chosen colors that continued to unite us: we each share a similar color with each other and then have one that’s just ours alone:

(Theirs look bigger than mine, because they are. I did a few extra repeats of the three-stripe section on theirs because I wish I’d done that with mine to make it slightly larger.)

And one final note about the yarns: I cannot recommend Jill Draper Makes Stuff and Ashton Studio Arts enough. All six skeins of yarn were lovely to work with, knot-free, and gorgeously dyed and gave the shawls a lovely hand. The D’Oro and the Lustro both contained stellina, which neither made the yarn prickly nor contained many broken sections. (There were only a couple breaks in the stellina, they never lasted more than a couple stitches at most, and I never had to reposition that strand, unlike in some other sparkly yarns I’ve used.) I would definitely consider them for your yarn needs and I look forward to knitting with them again in the future.