This is a history of the Cherry Hills shawl more than of the location in Colorado. I’ll talk a little bit about that but I want to share the inspiration behind this shawl and that is the history I am referring to.
As I shared in a past blog post this shawl is a remake of the Sophie because I felt like that one was an infringement on copy rights. You can see it at the link above, though the pattern is no longer available.
I had already chosen the color of yarn and ordered it before I learned that I wanted to remake the Sophie shawl to be something else.
The Sophie shawl was to be redone and re-released using yarn that is in the Mountains and Plains Fibershed. Lace yarn is hard to come by in that fibershed at the moment but I got close and ordered some from Mountain Meadow Wool in Buffalo, Wyoming.
It is a wonderful pink color, on the lighter side. I chose it because it was the original color of the Sophie shawl. That one I dyed the yarn for using Kool-Aid. It was to mimic the color of the pink blossoms on the chokecherry trees. I ordered a similar hue, though it is a good solid and not at all heathered like my original color.
When I decided that Sophie was to be scrapped and redone, I chose to make a piece that can be historically accurate. The yarn is 100% wool. It was commercially prepared and dyed but that’s not the point. Going on from that I sat and thought about what a woman coming up the Smokey Hill Trail might do. Art has always taken on our surroundings. Though the knitting of a shawl to keep warm is mostly utilitarian, it still has art in it.
I could see an Estonian woman designing a shawl using the motifs from her home country to look like the trees she was seeing along the trail.
I chose a leaf motif for the center and added nupps for the chokecherries. The border is a motif that looks like blossoms. I haven’t chosen an edging yet but it’ll reflect the trees and/or the era.
One of the stops on the Smokey Hill Trail is called the 17 Mile House. Named because it was 17 miles from “the” destination during the gold rush, Denver. What is now Colfax and Broadway being where you wanted to make it to.
Behind the 17 Mile House the Cherry Creek still runs. The creek is so named for the chokecherry trees that line it. One of the neighborhoods near Cherry Creek is called Cherry Hills for the same reason, the trees.
One of the families who later called 17 Mile House home lived in Cherry Hills first. The story I know dates back to 1939, when Cherry Hills was a farm of 360 acres and the exclusive housing development it is today. I have read Jack’s telling of the move from Cherry Hills to 17 Mile House many times.
The first time read it though, was when I learned that the exclusive Cherry Hills housing development had once been a working farm. Something utilitarian that had become something high-end and fancy.
I think the Cherry Hills shawl embodies that. A piece that was once utilitarian and “everyday” has now become something high-end and fancy.
Azariahs Fibre Arts 