Tapiola, Michigan, is a Finnish community where my grandmother Mayme,a knitter and single mom, raised six children in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. My grandmother never learned to read a pattern, but knit from memory the mittens, scarves and afghans that remain in the households of family members scattered across the country.

Tapiola is named for the city in Finland, designed by a team of city planners as a garden city, to marry urban living with nature
and agriculture. This shawl is designed with simple, easy-to-learn lace that might please the aesthetics of the city planners of Tapiola, Finland, and perhaps be one that Mayme would be proud to memorize and wear.

Modern knitters will find it to be an easy accessory to wear around town, and a way to showcase a special skein of yarn that deserves to escape your stash. Tapiola could easily be sized up or down depending on the amount of yarn available as body of the shawl grows organically into the border design, taking complex stitch count calculations out of the picture if you choose to alter it.