ZENITH: The time at which something is at its most powerful or successful.
The soft curve of a perfect, half-pi shawl. A delicate, dainty duck egg colour. Carefully pre- strung beads. Tiny, intricate stitches, creating a sea of stockinette. A brand new stitch that combines slipping, cables, and beads for a twinkling, quilted effect.
Zenith is the result of attention to detail, familiarity, and the challenge of something new coming together to create something deceptively simple; soft, light, and airy.
Zenith is a challenge in that it asks that you learn a brand new stitch in order to knit it, but is also made up of familiar stockinette stitch, making it an accessible challenge which, once met, will showcase your handiwork as perfectly on a summer’s day as a colder winter one.
Zenith is a pattern that came together in a couple of stages. When I came up with the Kiss Stitch and designed Keighley, I knew I wanted to use this stitch on lots of other accessories, particularly a shawl. I sketched out a few ideas on different shapes, put it aside, and left it alone in favour of other, newer ideas.
When I was busy knitting Nadir and the name came to me, it brought the word Zenith with it, as it always does. Thinking about the two words in the context of knitting reminded me of the sketches I’d done for kiss stitch shawls, and I knew almost immediately that a half-pi shawl with a deep kiss stitch edging felt like the word “zenith” to me.
Once I was thinking about the two shawls as a pair of opposites, I knew I wanted to have some similarities in there. Opposites aren’t quite as contradictory as you might think; in order to be opposite of each other, there has to be some relation, some common ground, something that makes them an opposite of each other than than something totally disconnected. The obvious answer, other than making them both shawls, was to use the same yarn for Zenith that I’d rooted out of my stash for Nadir.
I wanted to keep that thread of connection with the colour, so I chose this gorgeous, ambiguous, soft-and-light duck egg kind of colour, called Utopia. (I absolutely love how the colourway names are working nicely with my design concepts here, but it was a very happy accident!)
Zenith was a pattern designed in a spreadsheet. I carefully swatched, calculated my gauge and yardage, and worked out exactly how large a shawl I could knit using half-pi construction in order to perfectly place the kiss stitch section, for both practicality in terms of the increases and for visual balance. I also had to calculate exactly how many beads I would need to make sure I pre-strung enough.
Then it was just a case of actually knitting it. There was a slight complication here: I took it with me to work on while I waited for my car to be serviced, and forgot my cable needle. On the fly I worked out how to do the cables without a needle, and was able to include instructions for that in the pattern. I also made a video demonstrating it, because I know that this is a brand new stitch and the visual really helps.
Hurdle dealt with, the rest of the shawl was an easier and faster knit than I was expecting, and the end result is something that’s as soft, light, and airy as I was hoping for, with that little twinkle of something special from the beads.
Even though it’s a perfect size to drape around my (substantial) shoulders, Zenith also works worn backwards for a feminine, dainty neck warmer.
