Avonlea

Avonlea is the 8th pattern to appear in Lit Knits. The shawl is inspired by L.M. Montgomery's book, Anne of Green Gables which was published in 1908. This was the first pattern I designed for the book, and also ended up being the first one I took pictures of.

Avonlea is meant to be a knitted picture of what Anne saw as she first saw Green Gables. Along the edge of the shawl are ripples of The Lake of Shining Waters. Past the lake is a field of flowers. The flowers go from large to small to create an illusion of distance. After the smallest, and most distant flowers is a picket fence that surrounds the final part of the shawl: Green Gables. There are little windows within each of the gables. The top of the roof is bordered by a stockinette sky.

I was so nervous leading up to the Avonlea shoot. Up until this shoot, I had only used family members or been the model myself for my patterns. I didn't want to seem foolish or inexperienced, despite being friends with the model and lighting assistant. I'd also never done a shoot for a shawl, so I was also pretty worried that all the photos would come out horribly. There were more imagined scenarios of possible failure which I can't remember anymore. But then I took the first picture and all was right in the world.

This is the first picture from the first shoot for Lit Knits

We started out by a tree I had spotted during one of my bike rides. It had a perfect crook for "Anne" to sit and read her book. Thanks to my lighting assistant, there are some behind the scenes photos. First the picture of me taking the picture.

Photo credit to Alina Sayre

Here's one of the resulting photos.

We continued walking along and passed by a nearby lake. At this point we all realized that this could be our "Lake of Shining Waters" since the sun was starting to reflect upon it.

The last photos we got were of the project and the book. Although I knew that this was a shot I wanted to take, I didn't realize how much this shot would influence the rest of the photo shoots. I had thought that some of the "book shots" would also have a model holding the book. This shot proved that I needed to take a picture of just the book and knit (and sometimes prop) all on its own.