It started with the thought: What if contemplation isn’t idle but essential?
In a world that values never-ending and highly-optimized productivity, sitting with unfocused thoughts — letting them meander, circle back, or dissolve entirely — feels contrarian.
Contemplation is (one of) capitalism’s antithesis: it’s slow, nonlinear, and inherently “unproductive.” Yet it’s also where we dream, problem-solve, and reclaim agency over our minds.
I know this intimately. During my years of burnout and mental health struggles, my brain’s timeline shrank to surviving this hour, never mind next week. Recovery came with an unexpected gift: the return of mental space to contemplate. To think beyond immediate survival. To play with ideas again.
The Contemplation Shawl is an homage to that long and transformative journey. It features an asymmetrical triangular shape with a textured garter stitch body and winding cable borders. This design encourages you to “make each stitch sweet,” resulting in a soft, squishy fabric that rewards slow and deliberate knitting.
The shawl starts at the top tip and begins with an intercrossing cable border, which works quite well as a meditative exercise in attention and awareness (you might want to shoo others out of the room, though!).
Once this border is established, the body expands into a rhythmic garter stitch, creating that iconic textured fabric that invites the squiiiiishhhhhh ‘n’ sniff. The final ribbed edge is finished with a polished tubular bind-off, providing seamless integration to balance the shawl’s ribbed stitch flow.
As you knit: Where will your mind wander? To a creative project left dormant? A boundary that needs guarding? A dream you’ve been too busy to water?
Protect that time fiercely. It’s your sacred space of agency and autonomy.
The free version is available on my blog, The Practice of Fibre. The PDF version of the pattern is available for purchase on Ravelry. Use the special code UNTANGLE10 to get 10% off the pattern this weekend only!