FO Friday: Tailfeather

I finished up my Tailfeather (Ravelry link) shawl/scarf this week. This design, by Amy Van De Laar of Baroque Purls, has two sizes and I opted for the wider version. I have had this one queued up for a while and thought it would be a really good match for some leftover Homage DK from Shalimar Yarns that had been lurking in stash for a while. The yarn base is a merino/cashmere/silk blend and it has, as you might expect, a beautiful soft drape to it. It’s in the Water’s Edge colorway which is a very subtle tonal dye of blue-grays.

I opted to work the modifications suggested by other knitters who had gone before, to make the two ends match with corresponding points and a longer first and final repeat of the feather pattern. It wound up being a VERY generous size, so much so that I immediately decided it needed to go to a very tall friend for a holiday gift. (She’s 6′ tall and almost everything is too short on her, but this one won’t be!) I used exactly 600 yards for mine, which used up most of my yarn with just a bit left over for my DK scrap bag to be used for a hat or cowl at some point.

The textural lace and garter stitch “feather” pattern makes for a really lovely feel and loads of great, not-so-difficult knitting detail too. I think it could easily be translated into a fingering-weight scarf that would work well with multicolored yarns and would likely be a nice single-skein project that would still wind up a nice cozy length. The pattern itself is well-written and includes both charts and written instructions for the patterning.