Deadlines do funny things to my head. When my brain is forced to come up with something, it decides to meander off and do other things. This is one of those other things.

Another funny thing – I get my best pattern names from street names. Paris Mill is the name of a street. And I felt like the little diagonal columns looked neighborhoods on a map, full of little orderly cul-de-sacs and straight throughs.

I have to tell you, this shawlette practically knit itself. It *flew* off the needles. Part of that is that sideways construction just comes naturally to me. But the other part of that is that Jitterbug is my first true yarn love. It was my very first must-have yarn and it’s still my favorite. And this red color is my all time hands down most beloved ever. It took a lot for me to finally break into this skein. I’ve had it for years!

Needles: Size 6 needles (4 mm)

Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug in the amazing Vatican Pie colorway – my favorite red ever!

Size: Sample blocked to 56″ wide and 18″ deep – but like any sideways shawlette it can be made larger

Gauge: 20 stitches and 24 rows = 4 inches in blocked stockinette

Notes: Worked from side to side  – offered in written & charted format.

The Paris Mill Shawlette on Ravelry – $5.50 USD

So I had this idea for a new e-book -  Seven Songs. Seven beautiful shawlettes constructed in interesting ways, with beautiful lace and texture details, each worked up in a different gorgeous hand-dyed yarn. But I wasn’t sure if the idea would work. Could I get yarn support for such an idea?

Well apparently I can. The first shawlette went live today. That one I actually bought yarn for while I was at Stitches South. But I have a beautiful stack of yarn here at the house – that you will get to see soon  – for the rest of the releases. For the rest of the year, on the first of each month, I will be releasing a new and beautiful shawlette design. I have some amazing ideas and the yarn is really breathtaking. I am so excited about this.

So here’s the first one. The Debussy Shawlette is worked up on size 7 needles (4.5 mm)  in Sanguine Gryphon‘s Bugga in the Strawberry Crab colorway. I actually got to meet Gryphon and her lovely employee Noelle at Stitches South – and Noelle helped me pick out this gorgeous yarn.

This design was first imagined for Donna, who was my swap partner in a fun shawlette swap set up by the KnitGirllls. I knit up the shawlette for her in a hurry and had no time to get the pattern or pictures together. So I had to try to work from my crazy notes and redo the whole thing. Some things are changed slightly from the original, but the motif is the same, and I’m ever so pleased with the results. The design is worked from the top down and has no center spine, but still retains a rather classical triangular shape.

For this design I went looking for a classical song to name it after. Interestingly enough I kept coming back to piano pieces by Claude Debussy. La Puerta del Vino (The Gate of Wine) was the one that I loved the best and it suits the gorgeous wine color of the yarn just perfectly. You can hear the song here on Youtube.

You can buy the pattern individually for $6.50 or you can buy the Seven Songs collection for $21.95. If you choose the collection you will get a notification each month when the new pattern in the collection is released.

Just to let you know, because of the way in which this is designed, it is very chart heavy. Like all of my designs, the instructions are provided in written and charted format, but I highly suggest you work from the charts. In fact, the last 11 pages of this pattern are all written instructions. So if you use the charts, you can only print the first 7 pages and be good to go!

It’s actually a beautiful marble statue, but when I saw the name, I couldn’t resist naming my new shawlette Esquiline. The yarn is the Venus colorway of Celestial Twist by the Knit Witch. You can see the convoluted road that took me there, right? Naming patterns is so hard to do.

I took her to the beach for some pictures, because she just seemed watery and oceanish. And the lace mesh in the center reminded me of a (very pretty) fisherman’s net. So she spent some time at the pier…

…and she soaked up the sun. I think the mesh lace is the perfect pattern for those lovely skeins of variegated fingering weight yarn that you have and don’t know what to do with. Even the pooling looks pretty.

And the pattern is now available for sale. It takes about 400 yards of fingering weight or sock yarn and size 7 (4.5 mm) needles and can be purchased for $5.50.