Kidsilk Haze Circular Cape and Calienté

This past week, I’ve been plotting like crazy, which also means I’ve been knitting like crazy. Here’s what I’ve accomplished.

First off, I’ve been plugging along, knitting the border on that Lady’s Circular Cape in KidSilk Haze. The pattern is in Victorian Lace Today. I was making good progress on this last winter, until I realized that I was going to run out of yarn. I had two balls left when I started the border and didn’t get to the halfway point with the first one. Ooops. Naturally, this yarn had been aging in my stash so there was no more to be found in the same dye lot. I ordered a ball from the same vendor and it was really different – it looked like a different yarn, as well as being a different colour. I finally found a decent match in the old stock at my LYS – she said she thought Rowan must have changed mills for KSH, because she had also noticed that the newer stock looked different. (It’s shinier, as if it has more silk.)

So, with that solved, I’ve gotten back to it. Here’s a peek:Lady's circular cape by Jane Sowerby knit in Rowan Kidsilk Haze by Deborah Cooke

What you’re seeing here is the part of the shawl that has the border knitted on already. The neck is at the bottom of this shot, and you can see (at the pink thread) where I began to attach the border at the centre back of the neck. It then goes down one front and along the hem. There are 13 scallops in the entire shawl – you can see 4 here. I have 5 more to go, then up the other side and back to the centre back neck. Exactly one ball of KSH – 225m of knitting – to go.

The issue with this border is that I can’t knit it while I’m watching television. I have to pay attention. So, since we’ve been watching DVD’s of the first season of House, I’ve been knitting something else. Also Kidsilk Haze – but this is the new KSH Stripe.Caliente by Deborah Cooke knit in Rowan Kidsilk Haze Stripe by Deborah Cooke

This is my pattern, Caliente, which is free on Ravelry. I made it narrower than the pattern specifies, increasing only to four diamonds in width. I’m thinking this is about halfway, but am not yet sure how I’ll know when to start the decreases for the other end. I’ll likely guess, and if I’m wrong, I’ll be frogging KSH. Ick. I’d better make it a good guess!

Calienté

This is the stole I made with my Zauberball Lace, which is the Fuschienbeet colourway. The symmetry was pure luck, but it makes me very happy.Caliente shawl by Deborah Cooke knitted in Zauberball Lace by Deborah Cooke

My initial idea was to make a stole with pointed ends and a fairly simple pattern to show off the colour changes in the yarn. I thought immediately of Miriam Felton’s Juno Regina, but a quick look at the pattern revealed I’d have to follow the charts. I was in a chart-free frame of mind. I reasoned that I could adapt the Diamond Centre pattern from Victorian Lace Today to my purposes, and that’s what I did. It used almost exactly one ball of Zauberball Lace – I had less than 2 metres left. And beads – of course, it had to have beads.

The pattern is available as a free Ravelry download (do we love Rav? Yes we do!) right HERE.