Wild strawberries

There is nothing on this earth that tastes as good as wild strawberries. I'll never forget the first time I put one in my mouth. I was very sceptical (as children often are), and thought that something so small that grows roadside cannot taste very good. How wrong I was. I'll never forget my surprise at how incredibly wonderful and heavenly this small berry could taste.

It is possible that I find wild strawberries especially tasty because they are so hard to get hold of. First you have to find them. And when you have found a plant, you seldom find more than a handful of berries. But I do not think this is the main reason why I like them so much. Cloudberries are even more difficult to obtain, but I do not think they are as tasty.

I have tried to make the shawl look like a giant strawberry where someone has taken a bite out of the top. Perhaps not the most practical shape, but I could not help myself. At the centre, I used a pattern called "Strawberry", which I have modified somewhat for it to fit the shaping of the shawl. You can find this pattern in many books, including in Barbara G. Walker's book series "A Treasury of Knitting Patterns". I also found it free on the internet. At the bottom, I used a border from Nancy Bush's book "Knitted Laces of Estonia". I have made some modifications, that is, I have added and taken away some knops, to make it look like a row of strawberries along the edge of the shawl.

The shawl is knitted in a thin hairy alpaca yarn called Air from Du store Alpakka. The colour is a deep red, just like wild strawberries when they are at their best. The yarn was perhaps a little too hairy, so that the pattern was not as defined as I had hoped, but everything cannot be perfect all the time.

There are wild strawberries in my garden, both on the lawn and along the road to my house. Not much, just enough for me to have something to look forward to when I come home from work.