Scarab Shawl Revisited Again

It is an unfortunate fact of life that yarns get discontinued. I don’t blame the yarnies, they have to do what their customers want. But it can create some issues. When I re-knit the Scarab Shawl for independent publication (it was originally published in Knit Now) I was lucky enough to receive yarn from one of my favorite dyers Miss Babs.  The alpaca/silk blend that we decided to pair with the pattern brought a whole new look to the shawl and I adore it. I sometimes take it out and pet it. But alas, all good things must pass

But let us not look upon it as a loss, but as an opportunity! An opportunity to see Scarab knit in an entirely different yarn! This time the crack team at Anzula just happened to be introducing a brand new Sport weight MCN called Ava. And you know, the difference between DK & Sport weight is in the “close enough” category considering the non-fitted nature of this shawl. It was a bit of a gamble, but one that paid off.

I still love this delicate lace.

Look how beautifully the yarn paired with the pattern. This color is called Misfit and I am totally in love with it. I kinda don’t want to mail the sample back to California but it needs to be reunited with its owner. It was such a pleasure to do a photo shoot with this shawl and my model Fatimah is just the picture of beauty isn’t she?

We do have about as much fun as it looks.

Really, I don’t need to say much, the pictures speak for themselves.

But of course, before it departs on its journey I decided to make a pattern tour video.

In the video you will see the two shawls side by side. There are subtle differences in how the yarn behaved but both are beautiful. I think that you should knit two!

Til There Was You

The design of this shawl was driven almost entirely by the yarn. I had come up with a shaping idea, but other than that I had little to no ideas of what the details would be. It was me and the yarn and a bunch of swatching for quite some time. What precisely did this yarn like? What did it do well? And I found that it really loved cables. The chunky weight gave the cables great presence even with a 2/2 cross and the softness and bloom filled the cables in to create a wonderful field of texture in the basket weave pattern. You may recognize the Stitch Sprouts Crater Lake from a previous pattern release. This one has actually been in the works since before that one, but patterns will do what they will. Some cooperate, some take more nurturing.

Ever since In Uffish Thought I have been enamored of the idea of using a cabled selvedge to prevent rolling because it just looks so cool. For this the challenge was making the cable run seamlessly along the top edge when the construction was top down. The solution to that is Judy’s Magic Cast on, only worked flat. I didn’t want the texture of the cables to overwhelm the shawl so I kept the body simple. This also had the bonus of highlighting the lines of lace that make up the functional increases of this shawl. This wedge increasing eventually transitions into a pi-shawl increase to provide a blank slate (without increases) for the basket-weave trim.

A 10.5 needle produces beautiful drape,

You can easily size the shawl up and down by increasing or decreasing the number of repeats you work of the stockinette body. The rule of thumb to remember is that the trim will take about 50% of your yarn. As written the body takes about 150 grams of yarn and then the trim takes 150 grams. If you want to knit the body for 200 grams then you will need at least 200 grams for the trim. Does that make sense? And of course – since you are changing things on the fly, you might want to have an extra skein, just in case. 😉

I love the weight of the trim.

If you would like to check out the video tour of this pattern here it is!

The Peephole Stole – a study in gradient

Among all of the silly tests that one can take online, have you seen the ones that purport to test how good you are at discerning colors? The “Eye Test” ones? There are many but one day one scrolled by on the Book of Faces and it just kind of shook something loose. It was long and skinny and had thin vertical stripes of varying shades of whatever color it was in. I believe you were supposed to click and drag them until they were in the “correct” order.

But instead I saw it and I saw a stole. The first thing I did was pull up the page of Miss Babs gradient sets and look for color inspiration. Because yarn is the first thing you think of always, correct? Then, as I cannot sketch to save my life, I pulled up a drawing program and started monkeying around.

This was the best I could do to come close to matching the color set Carmen (which I fell in love with) and allowed me to decide if I thought the idea might work or if I was crazy (turns out both). Luckily this brainstorm hit me the week before SAFF and I would be able to speak to the woman herself! At the event I tried to explain my idea about working the colors out of “traditional” order and I showed her the above jpg on my phone. Then I babbled about working on the bias and adding a simple lace motif. In another stroke of luck she was able to see at least part of my vision and we were on our way!

Classic “wingspan” shot is mandatory.

Today is the culmination of that day in October. And I am totally surprised how close to my original vision it has turned out to be. After a ton of swatching I developed a simple Mosaic Lace motif (slipped stitches & lace) so that the pattern would be a relaxing knit. My tester even said it was TV knitting!

We ended up going with Carmen for the sample because I just kept coming back to it. What can I say, I love pink & purple. I am anxiously waiting to see what other knitters choose for their colors and how it comes out. I deliberately went with one where I would end up with really low contrast – almost invisible stripes. But a set with more contrast-y colors is going to look very different (and I anticipate cool).

The photo shoot went wonderfully and if you click through to the pattern’s Ravelry page you will see many more photos. I also shot a video pattern tour where I fiddle with the  shawl; show off its drape and talk a bit about the features and construction of the piece. Please check it out!

Do you have a gradient set in mind for making this? Let me know in the comments what colors speak to you!

Secret Shopper Unboxing

Hmm, I hadn’t realized that I had missed blogging last week – things have been absolutely a whirlwind. If you have subscribed to my YouTube channel you will know that I have posed several videos since last we chatted. I am not going to put them all here but I will link them.

I added a tutorial on how to do the Cross Stitch Mock Cable featured in my Cross stitch Mock Cable Hat. And then we had a wee chat about how much I love Knitting Bags. Finally, for my release of a new pattern Corundum Ridge I uploaded a pattern tour (this pattern will get its own blog post later this week).

All of this is leading up to the video I posted today, which is another Unboxing video. I had a load of fun doing the first unboxing of my gradient yarn & beads and I want to keep doing this style of video. But I needed a twist.

So what I came up with (with help from my friend Heather Zoppetti) is the idea of doing a Secret Shopper. What happens is that I have a friend shop for a knitting related product that they think is awesome and have it secretly shipped directly to me. And then you get to see the surprise at the same time that I do!

I don’t want to spoil the surprise before you watch the video – but I am beyond pleased with my first shipment. What do you think?

I will have to recruit additional shoppers for future months, I am going to try and do one of these every month (I would do it more frequently but that would get pretty expensive). If you have any ideas of who you would like to see shop for me (within reason) I would love to hear them.

Pattern Video Tour – In Uffish Thought

There has been brainstorming going on at Casa Benson with regards to what I can do with the video format. Tutorials are great, and I will continue to do them, but what else can I do? The video format offers me the ability to convey information differently than in either written words or still photographs so I really want to take advantage of its strengths.

I have a list of ideas that I keep adding to as they come to me. Some of them will take the acquisition of more technology and/or skills, but some of them can be accomplished with what I have on hand. Yesterday I filmed my first attempt at what I am calling a Pattern Tour. Which might make you do the head tilt, huh?

For every pattern I do a photo shoot and upload still photos to the Ravelry page (and here) and I try my very best to communicate all of the things that a knitter needs to know about a pattern. But things slip through the cracks. There are subtle elements that don’t quite come through. So I figured that I could shoot a video with me showing off the finished piece and babbling a bit about what you might have missed in the photos.

For my first swing at this format I decided to use In Uffish Thought. It is a fun, easy pattern with some subtle details that I think are not adequately conveyed by the photographs. Hopefully the video will show you more about the piece and maybe it will be a good fit for a yarn that you have been wanting to knit up. I tried to keep it short. Based on what YouTube tells me is the average viewing length of the previous videos – I need to keep them at 2:30 or less. Which makes sense, everyone is busy in this world!

My plan is to make this style video for all of my new releases (to add to the laundry list of other things I have to prep for a new pattern – why do I do these things to myself?), but I also want to go through my back catalog. If you have any of my already published patterns that you would like to receive this treatment, please do not hesitate to nominate them in the comments. It would be awesome to be able to prioritize my efforts.

Any feedback on this concept is also welcome. Was there something I did that didn’t work for you? Is there something you wish I did that would be great to add in the future? This is an evolving concept so I can try new stuff in subsequent videos.