You ever have a situation where you can trace exactly when a thought entered your head?  I can remember the exact moment that the idea for the Sunburst Shawl entered my head.  It was over a discussion of Fibonacci numbers and crochet, and I misspoke.  I meant to ask if it was possible to do a crochet technique in the round, and instead I said broomstick.

My friend replied she had never seen it done before, and I realized and corrected my mispeak, but the idea was then in my head.  WAS it possible?

But really, in some ways, I think the inspiration for the Sunburst Shawl goes back even further.

The Sunburst Shawl owes much of its inspiration to knitting.  Gasp!  It’s shocking, I know.

One of my favorite things to do is knit socks with the magic loop.  I’ve never been a big fan of knitting on straights, and while I like working on two circulars and did that for about a year, I started wanting my needles to have more than just one purpose.  I got into the magic loop because with a longer needle you can do big projects, but you can also use the magic loop to do small projects in knitting.

At the same time I’d also gotten interested in historical patterns, and both broomstick and hairpin lace.  Both techniques seemed like a great way to make quick crochet patterns with stunning results.  The only problem was that most people who were using these techniques were doing things similar to Doris Chan’s exploded lace.  They were working the techniques in worsted weight yarn.

I was interested in doing the work in something closer to lace-weight.  While lace is still far off from some of the weight yarn historical patterns were made in (especially with crochet) I thought it would highlight the open-ness of the broomstick stitches in a way that a thicker yarn would not.

This, combined with  the conversation I mentioned earlier in The Yarn Spot cemented the idea in my head.  It took a few months more of peculating, and a design call that spoke to me, to have everything align correctly.

I’d like to do more with the broomstick crochet in the round, both because I happen to like round things, and also because I think it’s wonderful to be able to take advantage of technologies that weren’t available before.

Besides, I like to do things that nobody else has thought to do yet.