châle six épouses | six wives shawl now in french

Bonjour mes amis!

I am delighted to announce that the Knitted Six Wives Shawl pattern is now available in French as well as English. It might seem a really random thing to announce on a cloudy Monday in September but there is a big story behind this translation and so settle in and I will begin.

There is an amazing and hugely popular French knitting podcast on YouTube called Tricolibri.

The host of Tricolibri is Emma (that’s her on the right looking lovely with her shawl) and earlier this year she made an extremely pretty version of the knitted Six Wives Shawl and talked about it extensively on her podcast.

Well, afterwards there was a veritable stampede (une véritable bousculade) to Ravelry by French knitters who were so inspired by Emma that they wanted to make their own extremely pretty versions of the shawl.

Luckily, I watch a lot of French knitting podcasts, they are hugely enjoyable, but also I’m learning the language so it helps for me to hear people talking in speedy, spoken French because it trains my ear a little better, so I knew that this stampede was all courtesy of Emma and her podcast.

So of course I got in touch with Emma mainly to say thank you but also to ask for her advice on getting a translator and guess what?

She speaks perfect English, and she speaks perfect English because she is an English teacher!

Wait, what?

She wrote back and said that she had been thinking the same thing (that it would be good to translate it) and that she would love to translate the pattern for me even though she’s never done it before but would be willing to give it a try.

How lucky am I?

And that’s the story, Emma translated the pattern, including all the extra information about Henry VIII and his wives, I converted her text into a PDF et voila! c’est finis. We are both really happy with the finished version and I couldn’t be more grateful to Emma because whilst I’m not terrible at French (ha, I am really), technical knitting terminology is a specialist subject and I think that only an experienced French knitter who also speaks English could have completed the task.

In closing, we’ve had a wonderful time bringing this new update to you and I hope that you enjoy it.

The Six Wives Shawl is a very simple and happy pattern to knit regardless of your nationality. It’s perfect if you are a beginner knitter and fancy trying knitting with mohair lace held double with 4ply yarn - although please note that the mohair element is entirely optional so don’t worry if you don’t fancy it, the shawl will look just as nice without it - and it’s perfect if you want to use up that pretty set of 4ply minis you bought two years ago on Etsy and have never used :)

The pattern is available to buy on Ravelry here and it automatically comes with both language versions, you don’t have to do anything except download your preferred version after your transaction completes.

Bon Tricot!