Tag Archives: unique sheep

Renaissance Fan Shawl

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I just finished this shawl, which was a bit of an impulsive buy. The kit came from Earthfaire, with beads and yarn included. I thought it was pretty and ordered it—when it arrived, the colours were so beautiful that the project jumped queue and leaped onto my needles. I’m really happy with how it came out.Renaissance Fan by Nim Teasdale knit in The Unique Sheep Luxe (Earthfaire kit) by Deborah Cooke

The pattern is called Renaissance Fan by Nim Teasdale (the same designer who created the Dragon Scarf I showed you a few weeks ago.) That’s a Ravelry link, and you can buy the pattern there. I bought the kit from Earthfaire, which puts together wonderful kits often with The Unique Sheep gradient-dyed yarn and matching beads. This one isn’t on the site anymore. It came with six skeins of yarn, shading from purple to green.

Renaissance Fan by Nim Teasdale knit in The Unique Sheep Luxe (Earthfaire kit) by Deborah Cooke

The beads included in the kit were purple, although they’re hard to see even in this detail shot. They look great on the actual shawl. You can see that I made a slight miscalculation and ran out of the last green. Fortunately, I had a little bit of lime green left from my Bitterblue shawl (also an Earthfaire kit using TUS yarn, and dyed on the same base yarn – it was meant to be!) so I was able to cast off in lime. I like it!

Renaissance Fan by Nim Teasdale knit in The Unique Sheep Luxe (Earthfaire kit) by Deborah Cooke

What do you think?

Finished Celestarium Shawl

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You might remember that I was knitting a shawl that was a map of the heavens. The pattern is Celestarium, which shows the stars overhead in the northern hemisphere—each star’s position is marked by a bead and an eyelet.

I finished the shawl last week. At first I was disappointed in the size, because it seemed small, and I thought it was a bit stripey. Then I blocked it and the magic happened. Here it is:Celestarium by Audry Nicklin knit in the Unique Sheep Luxe (Earthfaire kit) by Deborah Cooke

The yarn is a Gradiance colourway from The Unique Sheep on their Luxe base yarn called Celestial Twilight. Luxe is a 50/50 blend of merino and silk, and quite a luscious yarn. Earthfaire offered this yarn with the beads as a kit, and I chose to have the lighter colour in the middle and the darkest at the outer edge.

I wasted a lot of energy worrying that I’d run out of the yarn for the border, even though that skein was larger to ensure there was plenty. I chose a narrower border than I’d originally planned to use, and (of course) had almost half the skein left over when I was done. Now that it’s blocked, though, I wouldn’t have wanted the border to be any wider.

What do you think?

Celestarium Shawl

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This year, I’m trying to finish up all the knitting I have in progress, before casting on anything new. I have a LOT on the go, so this is going to take a while. (I also have very little discipline when it comes to knitting and keep casting on more projects, but that’s another challenge. The rationale is that I’m stash-busting.)

My current focus is a circular shawl in gradient-dyed yarn. Let’s talk about that today.

Once upon a time (way back in 2012), a designer created a circular knitted shawl that was essentially a map of the heavens. For every star visible above in the northern hemisphere, there’s a hole and a bead in the shawl. The pattern is called Celestarium. (Subsequently, she did one for the southern hemisphere called Southern Skies.) This is a pretty cool pattern, IMO, and qualifies as geek knitting. There are over 1000 Celestarium shawl projects on Ravelry, if you have some time to browse. Almost 600 of them are completed.

Some time after that, Earthfaire created a kit for the shawl, featuring gradient-dyed yarn from the Unique Sheep and crystal beads. Here’s the product page for the kit, although they don’t have any more.

I did get a kit when they were available, although it’s been waiting on me for a while. (Stash must age before use, you know.) The colourway is called Twilight. Mine shades from purple through to deep blue black. (You could choose to have it shade the other way – the last shade is the biggest skein and is for the border.) This is the same yarn base as my BitterBlue shawl – it’s a merino and tussah silk blend called Luxe. I really like this yarn, probably because I really like raw silk. It also doesn’t have the seracin smell that some silk yarn has, which I really really really dislike.

I’ve been knitting on my Celestarium for quite a while now. It has a lot of plain knitting, with the occasional star – which stands to reason. Even on a starry night, there’s more sky than stars! The charts are huge because there are no repeats: the final chart prints on eight sheets of paper, which then are taped together lengthwise to show the rows.

This is not TV knitting.

Here’s a star:Celestarium by Audry Nicklin knit in the Unique Sheep Luxe (Earthfaire kit) by Deborah CookeSee the little hole to the left of that middle bead? This is from the part closer to the middle of the shawl, where it’s more purple.

(Mr. Math has found a pun for this one, btw. When I drop a bead, he calls it a falling star. When I find it, he asks if I’ve caught a fallen star. Of course, he then advises me to put it in my pocket and save it for a rainy day.)

Round shawls that increase in diameter at a regular rate are called pi-shawls, and are based upon a design by Elizabeth Zimmerman. (My Urdr shawl was another of these.) What happens is that the number of stitches doubles at set intervals, which creates circular bands of the same stitch count. Clever designers make magic happen in these bands. When knitting a pi-shawl, I find that the first few charts are done really quickly, then the stitch count gets high enough to slow me down. The Celestarium shawl is knitted with fingering weight yarn, so the final chart has 576 stitches in each round. (The Urdr shawl was knit in lace weight, so the stitch count doubled one more time on that one.)

I’ve finished the body of the shawl, knit some extra rounds around the outside and am now knitting the border. I chose a traditional Shetland border called Wave Lace. It’ll look much better blocked, but here it is, still bunched up on the needles, but stretched out a little bit on the rug.Celestarium by Audry Nicklin knit in the Unique Sheep Luxe (Earthfaire kit) by Deborah CookeI actually pulled two stitches off the needle accidentally when taking this shot. =8-o

800 rows of border to go, then it’ll get a good block. I’m looking forward to seeing it then – blocking lace is magical.

What do you think?

Bitterblue Shawl

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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:Bitterblue by Barbara Benson knit in Unique Sheep Luxe (kit from Earthfaire) by Deborah CookeI 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?

Bitterblue in Progress

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Time to show you some knitting again!

I had lots of plans to finish more of my projects on the go, but so much for good intentions. I had ordered a kit for the Bitterblue Shawl from Earthfaire in the Magic Carpet colourway, and when it turned up in the mailbox, I just had to cast on right away.

I inverted the order of the colours and am approaching the halfway point. This shawl uses yarn that has been dyed in gradients, each skein slightly different from the previous one so that the end project shades from one colour to the another. In this case, it shades from plum to green. Unique Sheep Gradiance is the name of the company and the line of these meticulously dyed yarns: you can see some of the other colourways on their site, right here.Bitterblue by Barbara Benson knit in Unique Sheep Luxe (kit from Earthfaire) by Deborah CookeIf you looked at the pattern on Earthfaire’s site, you will have noticed that my shawl looks different – and not just because I inverted the colours. The pattern has a larger cast-off after every third repeat of the border pattern. When I tried that, though, I didn’t like the look of it. I thought I’d prefer the shawl if the line between the border and the body of the shawl was smooth, instead of stepped off, so that’s what I’ve done.

The result of that choice will likely be that the shawl will come out a bit shorter – because mine will be wider and there’s a finite amount of yarn. When you use gradient yarns, you’re supposed to ease the transitiion into each colour change, alternating between the old and new colour, before changing completely to the new colour. (Here’s the Unique Sheep tutorial.) This always gives me stress when the rows are of different length, because I fear I’ll leave the wrong amount of yarn and run out in the middle of a row. OTOH, I don’t want to have yarn left over when I’m concerned about the overall size of the shawl. So, I’m just changing from one skein to the next, without easing into the change, and using a Russian join between them. I think it looks good.

You can’t see another change I’ve made: on every row knitting back toward the border, the first stitch is to be knit according to the pattern. I thought the edge was too tight that way, so began to slip that first stitch instead. (And actually you can see it if you know what you’re looking for. The shawl begins at that lower point, where the purple end of yarn is showing. You can see that the right edge curls more in those first few rows – I changed to slipping the stitch before that row of 5 beads.)

And YES, this shawl had beads. A lot of beads. The beads change colours too. I started with yellowy ones on the purple, then shaded into greenish ones. I’ve just changed to the ones called Root Beer and will finish out with purple beads. You can see the beads better in the image below:Bitterblue by Barbara Benson knit in Unique Sheep Luxe (kit from Earthfaire) by Deborah CookeThe wool in this kit is really lovely. I’m not often a fan of silk blends, but this is wool and tussah silk, which is sometimes called wild silk. I love the feel of tussah silk in fabric, and also love it in this yarn. I’ll be wearing this one a lot when it’s done! I might not even block it because I like the look of the garter stitch. We’ll see.