Rising Fog by Bonnie Sennott

Rising Fog is a rectangular lace shawl knit in laceweight yarn. It features a central panel of diamonds framed on each end by a beaded edging.

The shawl was inspired partly by the early morning fog that I sometimes see above the hills near my home in Amherst, Massachusetts. I also had in mind a letter written in 1884 by Amherst poet Emily Dickinson, in which she spoke of her beloved nephew Gib, who had died of typhoid fever the previous year. Dickinson wrote: “The little boy we laid away never fluctuates, and his dim society is companion still. But it is growing damp and I must go in. Memory’s fog is rising.”

Reading those words makes me want to give the poet a shawl to wrap around her shoulders, something light yet warm, to ward off the chill and damp. So I tried to design a shawl that would appeal to contemporary knitters but whose simplicity might have suited Dickinson too. The interlocking diamonds are meant to suggest eternity, which she often wrote about in her poetry, while the beaded edgings call to mind wisps of fog rising over distant hills.

Sizes

Finished dimensions (after blocking): 19.5" wide, 60" long

Yarn

Classic Elite Yarns Silky Alpaca Lace (70% alpaca, 30% silk; 460 yards [420 meters]/50 grams): Color Number 2403, Cloud Grey, 2 skeins

Needles

US#3 (3.25 mm): straight or 24” circular; one additional straight or circular needle one or two sizes smaller for holding sts while grafting

Gauge

22 sts and 32 rows = 4” [10 cm] in St st after blocking

Notions

Size 10 (1.15 mm) crochet hook; 303 #6 seed beads; markers; tapestry needle; rustproof T-pins; blocking wires (optional)