I blocked the Heaven Scent shawl last weekend, and the lace opened up beautifully!
I still have to sew in the ends, but it was a good day for pictures.
It blocked out to a really nice size. It’s about 20″ deep at the middle back, and that long curved edge is about 84″ long.
And one last detail shot. 🙂
There are three more shawls in this pattern bundle. One is rectangular, so less interesting to me, but I’ll have a hunt through my stash for candidates to knit the other two crescent shawls.
You might remember the Blue Glitter Dress from Stickatillbarbie.se (pattern number 619) that I showed you in December. Here’s a Ravelry link, and here’s the link at the Wayback Machine for that page (patterns #601-650).
I made another one in plain black. This is an acrylic fingering yarn that’s labelled as baby yarn, that I bought at Walmart for a couple of bucks. I liked how soft it was, but (of course) that means it’s splitty, too.
Here’s the finished dress, which looks much better in plain black than in that glittery stuff:
I knit this one longer, so it would fit the Silkies, and that turned out to be a good thing. Even though the stitch counts and needles are the same on the bodice of both dresses, this one is much skinnier. Only the Silkie girls can wriggle into it. This time, the hem wants to roll, even though it’s in garter stitch. The acrylic yarn won’t take a block, so I sewed a line of beads into the garter stitches to weigh it down. That didn’t actually work – I had to fuss with the hem to get this picture and it flipped up again right afterward – so I’m thinking I might thread some wire into the hem to hold it in place.
Otherwise, I’m quite pleased with it, though – and I’m done with knitting ballgowns. They take forever!
This started as a quest for a string of pearls, but kept on going. Be warned – making these is like eating potato chips. You can’t stop with just one.
I made these necklaces on .5mm jelly elastic – knotted and secured with glue – and either 6/0 beads or plastic “pearls”:
You need to use a glue that remains flexible to secure the knot in the jelly, then you can cut the ends shorter. I used E6000.
Then I started to think about focal pendants (as one does). These butterflies were charms from Michaels, which I matched with other 6/0 beads.
Next up, I had a look through the other charms in my stash and tried these:
There are smooth teardrops with an A/B coating, little leaves with A/B coating, spiral charms and the one in the middle has the moon on one side and the sun on the other. I also realized that the jelly is stretchier than I’d originally thought, so I made some shorter necklaces.
These ones have faceted glass teardrops that are 9mm long. These were the smallest I could find and come on a string of mixed coloured drops. (I did find some quartz ones that are 7mm long, but they’re a lot more expensive.) Some of these are strung with 6/0 beads while others are with faceted glass 2mm beads.
Of course, you can go on and on with the variations. I’m thinking of necklaces with two or even three strands. Mixing the beads. Alernating beads. Beads of graduated sizes. (etc. etc.) Do my girls need dozens of necklace choices? No, but…potato chips!
We’ll see these in action when the girls model their ballgowns…
It’s finally finished and here it is:
It’s so big that it was hard to take a picture!
This is the Wingspan shawl, a pattern that was released this past spring. I substituted a yarn from my stash – Briar Rose Fibers Sea Pearl – because I thought it had a shine like raven’s wings. One skein was also the right quantity for the shawl. This stash-busting plan went awry, though, because I ran out of yarn and bought another skein to finish the wing tips. So, now, instead of having one skein of Sea Pearl in my stash, I have .9 skein in another colourway. C’est la vie.
I also went up a needle size, because I thought the fabric was too tight. That might be why the shawl is so big. I blocked it hard in a slight V and it’s 78″ from wingtip to wingtip.
Although it’s an amazing and unusual shawl design, it’s was less difficult to knit than I’d expected. If you’ve ever knit a chevron stitch, this is similar. I found it a little tricky at the beginning to get my bearings, but stitch markers were a big help. Once I got the hang of the pattern and could read my knitting, it became a bit repetitive (but not a TV knit for me.) The transitions – between each tier of feathers – were the challenging part for me and I had to follow them very closely. I don’t love the transitions, btw, and wish the spine of each feather started sooner in the transition, as soon as the stitches are available instead of all feathers beginning at the end of the transition, but it would be a lot more complicated that way. The transitions blocked out better.
Here’s a detail shot. It’s hard to capture the subtlety of the colours in this yarn. It really is lovely.
You can see the transitions I’m talking about, below the tier of feathers on the left and before the ones that hem the shawl (and fall to the right). They’re triangles of stockinette stitch, filling the space between each feather on the previous tier.
You can see that I added some beads, too. I really should have used a lot more of them.
Phew. I’m glad to have that one off the needles! What do you think?
You might remember that I was knitting a lace shawl. The pattern is called Snow Angel and it’s by BooKnits – here’s the Ravelry link for the pattern. I knit it in a gradient dyed yarn called Freia Ombré Lace in the colourway Autumn Rose. I actually ran out of yarn, so used some Elann Silken Kydd from my stash. I think the colourway is Baked Apple, and I worried it might be a bit dark, but I like it. I also used green glass beads with copper linings, in the positions specified in the pattern.
Here’s the finished and blocked shawl on the back of the couch. I’m not sure why I’m so surprised by the size of it but I am. I had in mind that it was going to be a scarfy little thing, but it’s a shawl. The colour is the most true to life in this first picture.
Here’s the whole thing spread on a rug so you can see the crescent shape of it, and the gradation in the colour. And yes, it’s too big for this rug!
And here’s a detail of the middle of the shawl, though it’s a bit blurry. It’s always amazing to see how the lace opens up when it’s blocked. It was hard to discern the pattern in those photographs taken while the shawl was on the needles, but not it’s obvious.
I’m very happy with this one. What do you think?
I told you a while back about a shawl I was knitting in gradient colours, following a pattern called BitterBlue. Well, now it’s done and I’m very happy with it. Because I chose not to block it, it’s between a large scarf and a small shawl in size. Blocking would make the points stand out more on the border and would make it larger, but I like how scrunchy the garter stitch is. Plus I just love the colours.
Here it is:
I did make some changes to the pattern – some planned and some inadvertent user errors – and you can read about those on my Ravelry project page, right here. The base yarn is really nice, and I realized that I have another kit from Earthfaire in the stash that came with the same yarn. I caked up the yarn for that project up, and will tell you about it next week.
What do you think of this one?
Here’s a shawl I just finished last week. There was an idea that it might be a Christmas gift, but it was running so late that the planned recipient got something else. Now, I guess it’s mine!
It’s a free pattern from Knitty, called Citron.
I made a Citron last year in Noro Kureyon Sock yarn, but it came out much smaller than this one. There’s a post about it, back here. Here’s the new one:
The yarn is a handpaint that I bought at the Kitchener Knitters’ Fair last fall, and (incredibly) it didn’t need to age in the stash before I cast on. It’s from Waterloo Wools and is called Kirkland. The colour is a bit more burgundy than it appears in the pictures – the flash seems to have made it look pinker. The base yarn is very similar to Malabrigo Lace. I used smaller needles than the pattern says, because I like the look of Malabrigo Lace on 3.5mm needles.
This time, I wanted the shawl to be bigger, so I did seven rounds of the pattern before the ruffle. (Yup, I had to figure out the increases myself, but it wasn’t that hard.) The skein had 840 yards and I used most of it – if the hem had been in the same red, I would have used it all up. It’s a good size, though – it comes down to my elbows.
I also added beads to the last four repeats, putting them in the flat part with greater density each round. I wanted them to get more dense toward the hem.
Since the beads were dark (black with red linings) and the yarn is very much like Malabrigo Lace, I dug into the stash of leftover bits and pulled out some Malabrigo Lace in black. I worked two rows of stockinette in black at the hem of the ruffle, but then it curled when casting off – so I added a row of purl on the RS, then cast off on the WS. There are some beads in the black as well. It still curls a bit, but I have mixed feelings about blocking it – the ruffles flattened out when I blocked that last Citron and didn’t really ever come back. Maybe I’ll live with the curl.
It makes me think of flamenco dancers. Fortunately, I don’t have any castenettes!
Alive & Knitting 