The Shima Shawl

October 8, 2025

I’ve made two scarves in my knitting career. The one I’m showing you here and the other one.

The other one was a very plain, straight scarf. Basically it was an 8” by 6’ rectangle. And I knit it in black. There’s nothing more unpleasant to knit with than black yarn. That rotten thing took foreeeeeeeever to knit. Was it easy? Yes. Was it quick? Absolutely not. And boring. So. Very. Boring. Knitting that scarf took so long and was so tedious that I didn’t attempt another one for approximately 20 years.

In those 20 years I knit a lot of sweaters, mittens, hats and socks but not another scarf. There were a lot of scarves that flashed their pretty colours and wormed their way onto my Ravelry wishlist but I admired them without making a commitment. I came close a few times but the dread of blah blah boring scarf hell would creep in and I would back out before hitting the purchase button.

Then I saw the Shima Shawl by Beatrice Mase. It was a triangle only better. It was two triangles nudging up against each other. One was a solid colour with raised lines running the length of it and the other triangle was multi-coloured with the stripes running perpendicular to the raised lines on the solid section. It’s a little hard to describe but the gist of it is that it’s the polar opposite of a single coloured, plain old, boring, rectangular scarf.

I knew it would be an interesting knit and I loved how it looked (at least in the pictures) when it was all wound up. I boldly hit the purchase button and I haven’t looked back.

I changed a couple of things. The pattern was written for three colours instead of the four that I used and rather than have the raised stitches that separate the two triangles be in the colour of it’s corresponding stripe, I made it the solid colour.

The only drawback to my plan was the massive bird’s nest on the back side that had to be woven in.