Our Machair Wildflower Shawl pattern combines lace eyelets and raised bobbles to reflect the machair wildflowers as closed buds, in full bloom and as autumn seed heads. This triangular shawl is knitted from point to flat edge, with stitches increased gradually over the whole length of one long side of the wrap.

Machair, a Gaelic word, refers to one of the rarest habitats in Europe, almost unique to the Hebrides. A dune pasture that produces an abundance of beautiful wild flowers from Spring to Autumn.

At Birlinn Yarn, we put our Hebridean sheep to the machair for winter grazing where they stay until lambing in the Spring, when they are brought back to the croft. The machair is then ploughed and sown with the crops harvested in the Autumn.

Thus, our beautiful, asymmetric shawl evokes the machair wildflowers throughout the seasons.