two sleeves, some yarn, new jewelry, and a shawl
Each Wednesday, I post little snippets about the projects I’m working on.
I spent most of the weekend working on projects that were very much not my secret project – yay! – and that ended up being quite productive.
Sleeves!!! My purple sweater has two of them. Now I just need to figure out the neckline situation, and I’ll have another sweater.
I finished a spinning & plying a skein of handspun yarn that has been sitting on my desk for months now – so finishing this feels amazing.
Back at VK Live in January, I learned how to bead crochet bracelets, but hadn’t learn how to close them. This weekend I learned, and how I have a pile of new jewelry! What’s not to love about that?
And finally, I took photos for a new shawl pattern. (Was the last shawl I finished, really Rosmerta?)
The design is a circular shawl, with a pretty complex, geometric, lace pattern – though I think my favorite part is probably the sun at the center.
I’m at the final stages of pattern editing, I think it came out beautifully, and I couldn’t wait to share some of the photos – so these are some of the outtakes that probably won’t find their way into the final pattern.
The yarn is Toil & Trouble’s merino/silk lace weight, two strands of yarn held together throughout the shawl, and knit on US #5 (3.75mm) needles. The colors are “Smoke Signals” (the light grey) and “Apollo” (the beautiful yellow/orange.)
PS! if you’re in the Boston area, Ana (the proprietress of Toil & Trouble yarns) just opened a new yarn shop in Salem – called Circle of Stitches. The grand opening is this weekend – March 7th, so stop by, say “hi,” and squish some yarn. Here’s the link to their website with the shop hours & address.
Lets Talk Yarn…
This is an excerpt from Shawls to Play With, a shawl collection that is more than the individual patterns, it’s about bringing more freedom to your knitting.
LETS TALK YARN
You’re at a yarn shop, wandering around looking at an amazing array of colors and fibers. A skein catches your eye, you pick it off the shelf, and fall in love. Madly, madly in love. Repeat.
Before you know it, your basket is full, you’ve checked out, and are on your way home with your haul, including a skein or two of lace weight that you didn’t mean to pick up, but that were too pretty to resist. Those skeins hang around your stash, until you finally do a yarn cleanse and pass them along to a lace knitting friend.
Sound familiar? A substantial portion of my stash is lace weight yarn passed along from friends who realized they would never, ever, knit with it. I’m happy to take beautiful yarn off your hands. But I’d be even happier spreading the lace weight love.
I get it. tiny yarn + tiny needles + big shawl + crazy lace = eep!
However, lace shawls are divine. They’re light, airy, drapey, ethereal, and well worth the headache.
But I concede, sometimes they’re a headache.
One of the most straight forward ways to reduce some of the headache of lace is to scale the project up. Many scale their lace projects up by using sock or fingering weight yarns. This does make the project less intimidating, however, most easily accessible thick yarns (especially sock yarns), are designed for durability instead of for drape. This makes them great for sturdy socks, but not so great for drapey shawls. When you use sock yarns for lace shawls, you’re exchanging the drape of lace yarns for the durability of sock yarns.
There’s nothing wrong with fingering weight yarns for lace shawls. It’s been done many times with great success. However, you will never get an ethereal shawl out of sock yarn.
Sock yarn just isn’t ethereal.
Instead I would suggest holding multiple strands of lace weight yarn together.
By holding multiple strands of lace weight together, you keep the drapey properties of lace yarn, while simultaneously being able to go up needle sizes. Of course not all of the properties of lace weight yarn scale up one hundred percent, but many of them do.
The shawls in this collection are perfect for…
…that special skein you’ve been hoarding
We all have very special skeins of yarn that we have no idea what to do with.
Maybe it comes with special memories.
Maybe it’s too variegated.
Maybe it’s not quite your color but is still breathtaking.
These shawls are for the skein that won’t play second fiddle to an intricate lace pattern.
No complex stitch patterns to steal the show, just an expanse of stockinette and strategically placed increases, so these patterns let the yarn shine.
…combining colors or mixing fibers & textures
Holding multiple strands together lets you easily mix colors. Or fibers.
And because the yarn is the star of these patterns there’s no lacework to obscure.
It means you can concentrate on your colors and textures and fibers.
Mix colors, or textures, or both.
The possibilities and combinations are limitless.
This was an excerpt from Shawls to Play With.
FO: Idril
Want a week of FOs? This is your week.
Pattern: Idril. also available part of Shawls to Play With
MC Yarn: Yarn Place, Graceful Lace Yarn
MC Colorway: “609218″
MC Yardage: 2 balls
CC Yarn: Sweet Georgia, Merino Silk Lace
CC Colorway: Savory
CC Yardage: 1 skein
Needles: 5.5 mm (US 9s) 40″ circulars
Dimensions: 35 inches (89 cm) in diameter, blocked
Idril is part of the Shawls to Play With collection. Shawls to Play With is a collection of four elegantly simple shawl patterns designed to open up a new world of shawl knitting possibilities. Find out more about the collection.
