Some time ago, I decided to create four colorways inspired by Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. I listened carefully to the music and also thought about the seasons themselves and how best to dye the
colorways to match the seasons. The colorways form a complex gradient. Each season gets darker but also contains some of the same colors from the last season.

After I dyed the colorways, I started thinking about designing a shawl pattern to go with it with stitch motifs that represent each season. For spring, there’s a flower motif, for summer there are
blackberries, for autumn there are falling leaves, and for winter there are snowflakes.

It’s a big, cozy boomerang shawl that starts with just a few stitches and increases two stitches along one edge while decreasing one stitch along the other edge.

Skill Level
Intermediate

Yarn
Four 100 gram skeins of DK-weight yarn with at least 240 yards per skein. For the sample shawl, I used Purple Lamb’s Buttery Soft DK in the Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter colorways.

If you prefer a superwash yarn base, Purple Lamb’s Squoosh DK would be great.

Needles and Notions

• US Size 8/5 mm circular needles that are at least 36 inches/90 cm in length
• One removable stitch marker
• 21 additional stitch markers (optional but very helpful for Seasons 3 and 4)
• A tapestry needle to weave in the ends
• Blocking pins and mats

Finished Size
After blocking, the shawl is 25 inches from top to bottom at the widest point and 80 inches across.

Gauge
The gauge doesn’t really matter so long as you are satisfied with the fabric, which should be fairly solid for the stockinette portions without being rigid. Nonetheless, after blocking my gauge was 4.5 stitches and 6.5 rows per inch.

Possible Variations

• You could make the shawl using a different yarn weight. You’ll just need a different needle size. I suggest trying US Size 5 for fingering weight, US Size 6 for sport weight, and US Size 9 for worsted weight.
• You could choose semi-solid or tonal colorways to show off the lace all the more. In that case, you might choose four colorways that suggest the seasons to you or even a single colorway for the whole shawl.
• You could make a half-sized shawl. The shawl is quite large. If you prefer a smaller shawl, you could do half the required number of repeats for each of the four colorways.