Nefta is a town in the Republic of Tunisia. Tunisia is not the home of Tunisian crochet but it's hard to resist drawing inspiration from a place of vast desert landscapes and of course, the backdrop of loads of Star Wars! The Nefta Shawl is a pattern for big contrasts, just like where the desert sands meets an orange sunset in Nefta.

I was lucky enough to be invited by Deb and Janine from Skein Sisters to try out some of their Fabulous Sock yarn for a new design. Together we chose three contrasting colours from their new colour collection and then I was told to 'go play'. Who can say no to that?

Nefta is really big and cosy: so good for wrapping yourself up on a wintery day or wearing more loosely for a fashion statement rather than warmth!

Nefta is an elongated half oval shaped shawl worked horizontally in Rows and then vertically in Panels. The predominant stitch pattern is a diagonal texture pattern that is made using offset tss2tog and yarn overs. The horizontal rows get rather long, so to break that up, a panel of stripes is introduced and worked at a 90 degree angle to the initial long rows. Further short rows are worked in panels to the end of the shawl.
This shawl uses three skeins in high contrasting colours and use up as much of each colour as possible there is less than 10g of sample leftovers in each colour. For my sample, I chose a slightly speckled/variegated yarn (Lollipop Colour B) then two tonal colours that were featured in speckles of the variegated yarn. I had the pleasure of choosing colours from the "master" dye lots of Skein Sisters new Fabulous Sock range. It was truly fun experience to play with the colours and talk through my ideas with Deb and Janine from Skein Sisters.