I love cashmere. Always have, always will. And, I love knitting with it. Good cashmere is liking having butter slipping through your fingers.
So it was a pleasure to knit Oak Park in The Plucky Knitter's aran cashmere yarn, Cachet. Oak Park is a triangular shawl, knit from the bottom up. This means that it moves very quickly at the end and the last several pattern repeats move so quickly that it's done and off the needles before you realize it.
Knit in the pattern yarn, it's a pretty, full size shawl that has enough heft to keep you warm on a cool night. But it also wraps around your neck nicely and has enough drape to be worn as a scarf.
Although it takes a repeat through to see the pattern evolving, it's not a difficult knit. I did end up marking off each pattern repeat of 16 stitches with markers so I could catch any mistakes quickly. But the pattern is easy to memorize and made for pleasant car knitting, not something you can't carry on a conversation while knitting. This is probably not a pattern for a new knitter unless you are quite brave and adventurous, but it's pretty enough that if you love it, you should go for it. Amy Miller, the designer, has her own Ravelry group and there is lots of support and advice there for those knitting this pattern.
This shawl will always be extra special for me, as I knit a good bit of it while on our family vacation in Glacier National Park. I carried it in my backpack on hikes, knit it at waterfalls, and brought it out (pictured above), when we emerged from hiking into the splendor of the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton, Canada for tea.
