Mystery awaits

For the past three years, August has been the time for my mystery shawl knit-a-long and this year is no different. This year's shawl is called Kajo which in Finnish means the first rays of sun peeking in the horizon. ⁠

Kajo is a playful shawl but I can’t really tell you more at this point as it is a mystery. The pattern comes with helpful guides on how much yarn you should have left after certain points and schematics to show the direction each section is worked in.

The clues will be released as follows:

1st clue, August 6th
2nd clue, August 7th
3rd clue, August 8th
4th clue, August 9th
5th clue, August 11th
6th clue, August 13th
7th clue, August 15th
8th clue, August 18th
9th clue, August 21st
10th clue, August 25th
11th clue, August 29th
12th clue, September 3rd

Now, if the MKAL kicks off in August then why am I talking about it already in May? A big part of the fun of a shawl MKAL for me is to set up a collaboration with a talented dyer to offer you beautiful yarn kits dyed especially for the shawl. The kits have been popular and we usually run out of a certain kit quickly but it's always so difficult to try and guess which one is going the be your favorite each time. So this year, we're doing things a bit differently: we are going to set up pre-orders so we will be able to offer more of the popular kits. There will still be an upper limit to how many kits can be dyed but this will help us to adjust things a bit and offer more of the most popular kits. 

The pre-orders for the Kajo MKAL yarn kits will go live in my web shop on Thursday May 13th at 8 pm Helsinki time (GMT+3). And before that, on Thursday at 4 pm Helsinki time, I'll do an IG live with this year's dyer where we will chat about the dyeing process and show you the yarn kits. I'm so excited for it all! I hope you'll join us for the live.

Anyone ordering a kit will receive the MKAL pattern for free. The kits will be shipped in early July and the first clue for the shawl will be released on August 6th. A little tip for everyone living outside of Finland: the shipping costs to most countries are the same up to 3 kg so if you haven't ordered Strands of Joy or 52 Weeks of Shawls yet, this would be a great time to do so. We've also finally got the shipping costs a bit lower when shipping abroad.

Of course, you can join the MKAL with stash yarn as well. This year, you will need three skeins of fingering weight yarn. Colors 1 and 2 should be a fade from light to dark and color 3 a pop color with good contrast to the first two. As many people are unable to use Ravelry, this year the MKAL pattern is also available on PayHip. I was very happy to find a way to send out update message to customers over there too so you should be receiving an email about each clue as they're updated no matter where you buy the pattern from.

You can find Kajo on Ravelry and PayHip.