Pomegranate Shawl

Another shawl for the summer.  I actually finished the knitting over a week ago, but I was too lazy to post about it.

So here it is, Pomegranate.

It was the first time using Wollmeise yarn for me. It's 100% Merino Superwash, in color Kurbis, using needle #6.

Wow I loved using this yarn for shawl.  It stretched out effortlessly during blocking process into a lacy fabric. I didn't have to block it too aggressively, it just opened up beautifully with the loose gauge. The shawl turned out to be 70" wide x 12 1/2" tall. perfect.

Though the yarn may not be squishy as some other merino, but I like it. I'd definitely use it again for a shawl.  And the famously beautiful and saturated dye job of the yarn barely had any dye ran in the soaking process, I was impressed.

...

Finally, some good news after a week of feeling so angry and upset at all that's happening around the country. Black people, in the year of 2015, are still being killed because of their skin color. A flag that symbolizes a history of hatred and slavery, in the year of 2015, is still being flown at a state capital.
But today, one step forward for this country:
US Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage.

It really shouldn't be a radical idea in 2015, to ask everyone, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, to be all be treated equally, and able to have the same rights.

Just For the Heck of It

Sometimes, I do things because I simply couldn't help it, even knowing the result isn't going to excite me much.

Proof: this shawl.

I just let my curiosity took over.  In my head, I already knew it would not be nearly as lovely as the Linen shawl I did previously, even though it's the exact same pattern.  But I just had to do it to really see how the FO looks
I used thicker yarn, sports weight, Classic Elite Fresco, which is a wool/alpaca/angora blend, and larger size.

The linen version came out more than I'd hoped because Sparrow the yarn has very subtle pearly sheen, and with the natural color, it looked rather classy.
This one, on the other hand, fun, but kinda like a granny square (without the squares) afghan looking, but not exactly in the retro chic way.  Granny squares are cool, just not wearing it as a delicate shawl. In my opinion, it's not bad, but it's just kinda OK.

Nothing wrong with kinda OK at all, especially if it totally satisfied my curiosity, so I can now move on to next design.

Linen in Early June

After the linen dresses and skirt, I'd continued with my obsession with linen.
To use up the remnant of linen fabric I had, I made few bags, with zippers to zip close.
I love totes, but I don't use them much because I like my bags with total closure.  So I made myself coupla linen bags with zippers.

I decided to make a little "logo" that says yellowcosmo using bleach pen just for the fun of it.

Then I just wanted another linen shawl.
As I really dig the small butterfly motif on my Butterfly Lace Shawl, I decided I'd modify it a bit and make a linen shawl using the motif.

The border was improvised last minute, quick improvisation.  This shawl is a bit different than my usual shawl design, it has all over motif and rather minimal edging.

The shawl came out more like a shawlette at 50" wide x 22" tall. I only had 2 skeins of Quince & Co Sparrow in color Sans and I didn't want to wait for more to complete a shawl.  I used up every bit of the the 2 skeins with only 2 yards left.  The design can be modified easily into larger shawl. I may just make another larger one using non-linen. With needle #4,  the shawl came out airy enough.

I wasn't sure how shawl would look, but I really just enjoyed making of the shawl so I didn't really care.  And I was very pleased that it turned out rather nicely.

Butterfly Lace Shawl

I promised myself to make some shawls this summer.

I started with an abstract lace design.  After 3 tries, I was very not thrilled.  I didn't like the motif for many reasons, one of which was it felt too familiar as others I'd designed, like I was just rehashing the same thing. The other one, the design was just not good at all.  I sat around and didn't know what to do for coupla days. Then it came to me that I should go with a butterfly motif, something more concrete to start with. When I didn't have any good ideas of motif nor could I just find a flow and be inspired, it helped to have a concrete shape to guide me, even if I'd preferred a more abstract motif.  Well, I'll save that for next time.

the failed designs

yay, butterflies!  

I went with the bottom one for less fillet looking lace.

Here, after 2 tries, I felt a lot happier.
I knew immediately it's gonna be a triangular shawl to both echo the shape of the butterfly, and to keep the elongated shape of the butterflies.  Yes, I finally learned from my experience, crescent shawl does stretch out the motif sideways when blocking.

I kept waffling back and forth about the body whether I should keep it simple in stockinette stitch or find something from stitch dictionary to make it more all over lace.  I decided I'd go for the simple stockinette stitch and started knitting.

As I moved passed half of the shawl, I thought, "why not simple butterfly motif so the transition from plain to border is softer?" I put aside the shawl and spent the day coming up with a motif that would work since I didn't find anything that fits the idea from my collection of knitting dictionaries. (Little confession, I only have 2 knitting stitch dictionary books, I feel like I should get more to be a proper designer, but somehow I always end up spending money on more useless things.)  

I'm pretty thrilled with it the transition lace. In the end, I might be even more thrilled with it than the large lace border.  Somehow, the lace border ended up more abstract than I thought they were in the swatch.  Not that it mattered much in my eyes.

I used Madelinetosh Prairie, a lace weight, single ply yarn from my stash.  The color is called Thunderstorm, a dark subtle variegated black/charcoal. The shawl used about 715 yards. It's a pretty good yarn yarn to work with.  (Another confession, I generally don't care working with lace weight yarn.) I used needle size 6 for an airy fabric. Couldn't help it, I added some beads to the last 3 RS rows that matches the color of the shawl. I wanted the beads to add just a little weight to the otherwise very light shawl.

All in all, it's personally a great exercise, some problem solving and learning how not to get so hung up a direction. I'm happy.