Earthbound Misfit

I love collaborating with other independent business people in this wonderful industry and I am always amazed how much more I can achieve when I work with other brilliant creatives. This new shawl is a prime example of my point. I decided to call it Earthbound Misfit (after my favorite Pink Floyd song Learning to Fly) and it features beautiful custom gradient sets from The Unique Sheep and perfectly matched beads from earthfaire.com.

The first step is that I drew up an idea I had and took my sketch to SAFF because I knew that Kelly (from The Unique Sheep) was going to be there. My drawing skills aren’t the greatest, but I thought y’all might like to see where things started:

We start with images and art that have caught our eyes for their color combinations. Once we have narrowed down the candidates Kelly from The Unique Sheep works her magic developing custom colors. Occasionally the colors need to be tweaked until we are all happy – but they are always stunning from the get go. Then the yarn travels to Ellen at earthfaire to be matched up with the perfect beads.

For this shawl I asked her to put together a “bead soup” of multiple different colors that matched the colors that the yarn gradients pass through. By placing these colorful beads on the contrasting color stripe the beads have a big impact with a relatively small number of beads (compared to the size of the shawl). I also wanted to challenge myself to place the beads randomly. I’m not much of a “random” person – but sometimes you just need to loosen up!

Speaking of size, the pattern is designed to have some wiggle room in the amount of yardage you need. We worked with three different fingering weight bases and they each have slightly different yardage. I planned the color changes to occur in the large textured bands and you can fudge the transitions by a couple of rows here and there to match your yarn. The end result is a shawl that takes between 900 and 1000 yards. The resulting shawl measures 24″ X 55″ (61 X 140 cm) but due to the curving shape it wraps around as if it were much larger.

If you are in love with one of these specific color combinations you can get them in kits exclusively from earthfaire.com. You can also pick out your own gradient set from The Unique Sheep in their Luxe, Verve, and Tinsel Toes bases. Just let them know you are making an Earthbound Misfit and I am sure that they can make sure you have the right amount of yarn and a great contrast color. I cannot wait to see all of the different versions of this that might come about. Seeing the three that we created amazed me in how changed the pattern appeared in the different color combinations!

Come learn to fly.

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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!

Each to Each – a beaded lace shawl in gradient

Have you heard of a sock blank? It is this really cool concept where the yarn supplier takes an entire skein of sock yarn and pre-knits a long strip of stockinette yarn. This provides a palette where the dyer can then work their magic. From the knitter’s point of view you buy this beautiful strip of art which slowly unravel as you knit directly from the blank. Or you can go ahead and ball the whole thing up and knit from that.

The amazing thing is that, when knit, the colors completely rearrange themselves and you get this beautiful variegated yarn that doesn’t really pool. For this new shawl I worked with the sock blank Sea Garden from Gale’s Art to create a top down crescent shaped shawl. Gale requested lace and beads and I think I fulfilled those requests. I might have gone a bit bonkers with the beads.

But I don’t regret a single bead. It is so sparkly. I may not be a big fan of myself when I am putting them on (who thought this was a good idea is something I mumble to myself), but the end result is so worth it. It isn’t a spectacularly large shawl, I designed it to make the most out of a single skein – more of a shawlette really.

It works as a kerchief!

But it is easily adjustable. There is the main lace motif and then the edging. You can adjust either to suit your desires. Because the color was named Sea Garden I decided to try and evoke a watery feel. The central lace pattern is wavy, which also does double duty in moving the gradient around a bit, and the bottom is meant to look like a fisherman’s net awash with the sparkling drops of the sea. This desire also led to the naming of the shawl. I took a line from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T S Elliott:

Each to Each

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

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!

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.

Ves, a shawl inspired

I am going to go out on a limb and say that most knitters (who would be reading this blog) are familiar with the concept of a “yarn club”. You know, when a great indie dyer gives knitters the opportunity to “subscribe” to a series of exclusive yarn colors that are delivered over the course of many months? That kind of club. Frequently the yarn arrives with a pattern designed specifically with & for that special yarn.

Going on the assumption that there is already some familiarity with this concept, I now ask you if you have ever heard of the Miss Babs Knitting Tour version of this concept? The lucky knitters that join this club are “armchair travelers” and they receive 4 shipments in the year. During the planning stage the wonderful people at Miss Babs (including the namesake) select four destinations and provide them to the featured designers so that they can draw from them for inspiration.

This time last year I was tickled beyond words to receive an invitation from Miss Babs to participate in the 2015 tour. My shipment ended up being the first (March). It took great restraint, but I didn’t blog about it because, along with the exclusivity of the yarn, the pattern was unavailable to the general public for 6 months after the “travelers” received their packages.

Guess what? Six months is up!

Get your own copy of Ves!

The inspiration destination for my leg of the tour was Sri Lanka! Like any dedicated artist, once I learned that I immediately booked a flight to Sri Lanka to do research!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I wish. I totally Googled it.

And if you are looking to see piles and piles of beautiful art, landscape, and architecture I recommend you do the same. There were many things that caught my attention, but in the end I drew my ideas from traditional Sri Lankan dance. Specifically, the costumes of Kandyan dancers which are referred to as Ves. If you want to see some of the pictures that grabbed my attention here is a link to a Google image search. The intricately embossed metal pieces led me to creating an intricate and deeply textured lace pattern that evoked the shape of the points of the headdresses.

The technique used in this shawl is Mosaic Lace like Golden Lion Throne and Love Child, with a complexity falling somewhere between the two. Close to 50 Armchair Travelers finished the shawl within the allotted -a long period so if you want to see finished shawls you can check out the Ves project page. The two sets of colors that Miss Babs made for the shawl are gorgeous, but I cannot wait to see what colors other knitters match up!

So, if exotic travel isn’t in your budget … at least you can do some exotic knitting from the comfort of your own home. And you get a great souvenir! 😉

Queen of Mapes

During the Gift-a-long I posted an interview with one of the other participants of the event and had a lot of fun. It got me to thinking that there are so very many interesting people in the knitting community that I should do more interviews. Then I got to thinking about who I should interview. The obvious thing to do would be other designers and dyers and so forth – which I totally plan to do – but it occurred to me that many of the people I would like to know more about are the knitters.

People like you, gentle reader. 😉

And immediately someone popped into my mind. You see, there is a wonderful knitter on Ravelry (who I have never actually met) who has made one of my patterns 10 times. She is the undisputed Queen of Mapes As someone who can barely manage to knit the same pattern twice (hence becoming a designer in the first place) I am completely floored by someone wanting to knit one of my patterns more than once. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.

Here are 9 of the 10 Mapes

So I would like you to meet Judy (perseph43 on Ravelry). She graciously agreed to answer my nosey questions and I am super excited to share them with y’all. I did a bit of snooping on her Ravelry profile to develop some questions and she was kind enough to elaborate even more.

Before we get into the interview, here is a little background on Judy from Judy:

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In my prior (to retirement) life I ran my own home based cottage industry business designing and manufacturing clothing for women’s specialty shops. I employed two full time seamstresses, several home based pieceworkers, and a sales rep. Our kids also worked on part of the process when the spirit moved them to do so. We had a big old house and the room to do this but most importantly, I was a stay-at-home-mom.

For fourteen years I had a quilting group of “old ladies” who came to our house every Thursday for the day. The youngest one was 74 when we began. As they became unable to drive a girlfriend and I would go around and pick them up. We made so many quilts – all hand pieced. We always had at least two quilts in the works – one on the table for quilting and one in pieces that the ladies would take home to work on. We took turns being the recipient of the finished quilts.

Everyone brought their own lunch including the two seamstresses upstairs – we all ate together and it was much fun. A side benefit of that quilting club is that my children enjoy and are comfortable with the elderly. Now that I’m in that category myself we are reaping some rewards – ha!

After the kids were grown and gone I designed and maintained websites for organizations and several businesses.

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And now, the questions:

Q: Moving from Minnesota to New Mexico is a huge shift in culture and climate. What prompted you to make such a huge move and how much does where you live influence what you choose to knit (and knit with)?

A: What prompted us to move was Minnesota ice and the endless winters. Las Cruces is high desert at the foot of the Organ Mountains about 40 miles north of El Paso. We do have winter but the coldest it gets at night is perhaps 20 degrees. Beautiful bulky knits are not an option here, but mid-weight garments are perfect and those with a rustic flavor always get my attention.

Q: Looking through your projects, knitting something for yourself seems to be the exception among beautiful gifts. What are your favorite gifts to knit?

A: It’s getting harder and harder to part with my treasures but mitts, cowls and scarves are nice to have in my gift drawer. Shawls are good gifts but only if I am certain of color or shape for a particular recipient.

Q: Of course, the thing that brought you to my attention (among my nosey Ravelry snooping) is your apparent affection for my pattern Mapes. Why do you like this particular pattern?

A: Mapes! What can I say? It’s the perfect pattern and project. It is portable, easy enough that I can carry on conversation or follow a TV show and has such a relaxing rhythm to it that I’m always thinking of the next one while I knit. It curves around the shoulders and stays on! But also it’s a blank canvas –

Q: When I wrote Mapes it was with hope that people would find it easy to customize and make their own. You seem to have caught on to that intention. What are the modifications that you have made and which are your most successful? Is there anything you tried that just didn’t work?

Can you believe that ruffle?

A: I have added one extra stitch in the cast-on to give me an odd stitch count rather than even when I wanted to incorporate a centered pattern and this worked well. I tried to incorporate beads into that very pretty line of holes which start at the neck and wrap around over the shoulder and hang down the front. That was a flop but I’m still thinking about that one. It’s simmering on a back burner in my brain. (This is something that I had to make happen too, see Caladan).

Q: What are some of your other favorite patterns? (it is OK if they are from other designers)

A: Amiga by Mags Kandis. Amiga is another blank canvas open to all kinds of interpretation and I love it. Although it was written for flake cotton and summer it works equally well in heavier weight yarn for cooler weather. I love top-down cardigans because it’s so much easier to control the fit. You don’t finish all the knitting only to discover that the fit is horrible and fixing it would require massive frogging. (Except I managed to do just that on one top-down sweater)

Martina Behm’s 22.5 Degrees because the formula for the shaping renders a triangle shawl which is more shallow and longer.

Q: On your Ravelry profile you paint a lovely picture of knitting with your Grandmother and her friends, it sounds like a wonderful memory. Could you tell us about that here? And in this vein, have you taught (or considered teaching) any of your grandchildren to knit?

A: I was my grandma’s first grandchild and she called me Honey. So I, in turn, called HER Honey. The name stuck and all the future grandchildren called her Honey. What was so lovely about being with Honey and her friends was that I felt like a grown-up while I was with them. My verbal contributions to their conversation were accepted and the flow continued. We would have lunch on plates which also held a teacup and hold them in our lap.

I have six grandchildren – five boys and one girl. I taught one grandson to knit when he was about 8 or 9 and now he is a senior in high school. He is very creative and artistic so maybe knitting is something he will come back to later in his life. My granddaughter was not interested as a child but she says she has taken up knitting recently. She is back in Minnesota and maybe when we go back to our cabin next summer we can compare notes

Q: Finally, I am always curious how other Ravelers use Ravelry. What role does Ravelry play in your knitting life? Do you use it mostly for finding patterns, planning projects, keeping records? Do you make use of the social aspects of the site? What is your favorite feature?

A: I could not believe my good fortune when I stumbled upon Ravelry! I’m a ‘puter nerd and actually built several of my own in the nineties. So it took me no time at all to appreciate the complexity of the Ravelry site. What a resource! It’s wonderful to see what other knitters are creating and their interpretations of a pattern or their use of a particular yarn. It’s so stimulating – the brain cells feel like they’re statically charged! 🙂 Keeping track of stash is wonderful – although, I confess to having some not listed. Being able to go back and see what size needle you used on a project or how many yards were used is priceless to me. I’m sometimes disappointed when people leave out some of the critical info on their project pages.

Another invaluable tool for me is the listing of my personal library. My goodness, to be able to get a look at all the cardigan patterns in my library and see what magazine or book they are located in? It boggles the mind

It never would have occurred to me without Ravelry to mix yarns to create unique fabrics. Now I love mixing yarns and kinds of fiber together. I like adding silk to a garment to get that lovely drape. Rayon does the same thing and I like adding that. When I invest in stash now it is with the idea that it will be blended with something else.

Oh – and let’s not forget dyeing! That too has become addictive – all the info you need right on Ravelry.

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As suspected a fascinating person was behind all of that knitting. It is possible that knitters are the coolest people ever. I hope that y’all enjoyed this as much as I did, because I plan on more interviews. Is there any one in particular you would like to hear from? Feel free to comment away!

Zagless

Last week I had two patterns come out and I thought I would go ahead and talk about one of them. It was a little bit of a surprise for me because these projects are ones that I worked on last Fall in conjunction with Stitch Sprouts and the dyer Anzula. You see, these two independent fiber companies teamed up to produce a series of booklets to feature Anzula’s yarns (and also Stitch Sprouts designers) Yay!

I had the opportunity to work with two different bases Squishy and Cricket. Both are crazy soft and come in an amazing array of colors. For the fingering weight Squishy I decided to do (surprise) a two color mosaic style shawl.

I know, you are stunned. 😉

As you might have noticed I am a bit enamored of this side to side construction right now. This one is similar to Love Child in its shaping, but with subtle and not so subtle differences. For one, there is no lace at all in this. Truly. A actual solid piece. For me, an event, no? It is knit up on larger-than-average needles for fingering to allow the yarn to shine in its glorious softness and to maintain a lovely drape. But I wanted to keep it solid so that we had a truly functional shawl, one that would actually keep you nice and cozy.

The pattern is an optical illusion and one thing that really surprised me is how much the texture creates an interesting overlay that is almost independent of the color pattern. You can see it most in the zigging portion of the stripe – where the texture of the slipped stitches actually moves in the opposite direction of the color pattern.

You can see the whole side to side.

This oddity is why we chose to keep with colors that were very close in tonal value. If you crank up the contrast on the colors I think the illusion is going to be exaggerated and you are going to get something that truly changes appearance depending on how you look at it. Which could be totally cool, I can’t wait to see what people do. But it would have been a giant PAIN to photograph – so we went more subtle.

Of course, with this kind of project I have to lovingly pack up the sample and send it off to live with another. I miss it and its snuggly aspect. I am afraid that I am going to have to knit one of my own so that I can love it and pet it and hopefully wear it! Of course the question there is what colors I might knit it in for my very own self? I love the colors that the pros picked and would be tempted to do the same. But why do the same thing twice? They carry 98 colors to choose from, you can see a sampling on the Ravelry page here. What colors would you match up?

One way to wear the shawl.

The pattern is available in the ebook and soon through your local yarn store that carries Anzula. It is also available as a singleton. The single pattern has instructions in both written & charted formats. The pamphlet had to think about space issues so it is chart only, which really, when you also get 5 awesome patterns from some very talented designers it really isn’t much of a issue, eh?

All photographs courtesy of Stitch Sprouts.

Love Child – a shawl

Here are words that I never thought would ever come out of my mouth: I love Yak!

Yak fiber that is.

Meeting a new fiber is always an exciting experience, but it doesn’t always end well. Luckily this is a love story. This yarn from Gale’s Art is a blend of Merino, Yak and Silk and it is a treat to knit. The name is more descriptive than fanciful, MYS622 – but it tells you what it is, a 60/20/20 blend of the aforementioned fibers. In a way it is similar to the cashmere blends with comparable blends, but the Yak is decidedly different than the cashmere. It is wonderfully soft, but it has a weight to it that cashmere lacks. The yarn also has a … coolness … to it, in the hand it feels almost like it is slightly damp – but it isn’t. Now that could be the high silk content? I am afraid I am not a fiber expert, but what I do know is that it knits wonderfully and has fantastic drape. The yarn itself feels heavy in the ball but the finished shawl is remarkably light weight (yet warm at the same time). Plus, it comes in absolutely glowing deep colors.

When we started talking about working on a piece together I absolutely knew I had to do color work. Gale was looking to put together a kit for the upcoming Fall fiber festival season – and I was pleased as punch to be a part of the project.

Hello lovely

Presenting Love Child. The name? Well it is a bit silly (but when am I not?) but it comes from my attempting to describe the idea over the phone. I believe what I said was “It is as if In Uffish Thought and Captive got together and had a two color Love Child.”  A few hours later I received a text message cursing politely thanking me for getting the song stuck in her head. And the title stuck as well.

You know me and swoops.

If you have been playing along at home you probably recognize this shape. I have become enamored of it. The side to side construction makes me happy because it allows the knitter to adjust easily to their yardage and desired size of project. It retains the curved neckline of a crescent that allows it to hug the shoulders and wear comfortably, but its hybrid triangular shape makes it deeper down the back and provides more styling options. The slight asymmetry shifts the “point” to one side to eliminate the dreaded “arrow pointing at butt” effect that so many dislike about triangular shawls … all in all I think the shape has a great deal going for it.

This shape just wears in so many ways

For this version I have eliminated the lower edge “trim” that you find on In Uffish Thought and BitterBlue. It streamlines the shawl and takes it into a more casual and functional piece. It is also the result of a whole pile of math to create shaping that is of an every other row style as opposed to the binding off some stitches style. Both have merits and I thought I would play to see what I could come up with. I wonder what would happen if I did both …. hmmmmmmm?

Are you ready for fall?

My end result was a shawl that is remarkably easy to knit. I memorized it without really trying and truly enjoyed the knitting process. It has some easy lace and a very repetitive rhythm, there is one fancy stitch for the leading edge increase – but you will soon get the hang of it.  It is also easily adjustable (as I said, one of the pluses of this shape) both in size and the possibilities for customization. I chose to have the striping pattern produce regularly spaced bands of color – but one could also muck about with the color changes and create one’s own banding pattern that suits one’s fancy! As is typical, I thought about how I could change up the colors as I was knitting it – but relied on discipline to stay the course.

Yet another way to wrap.

The photo shoot went beautifully and I had a very hard time narrowing down the shots.  I also almost fell into a stream. Fatimah said “Fall with the camera in the air.”, because she totally knows what is important! The shawl itself will be traveling to New York Sheep and Wool (Rhinebeck) with Gale and she will be offering the pattern in a kit with her stunning yarn. If you are going please stop by and say hi! I also believe that she will have the kits at Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair (SAFF) – which I will be attending! If you are going give me a holler and maybe we could say hi!

I would love to hear your thoughts on shawl shapes in the comments. Likes, dislikes, suggestions? Please speak up!

 

Edited to answer request in the comments:

I know I say it, everyone blogger says it – but I love comments. Without comments it is kinda like throwing pennies into a wishing well and never finding out if your dream comes true. Unless I receive feedback I don’t know if I am giving y’all the information that you want/need/enjoy. So when I saw the specific request from shoelaceswitcher in the comments I was all like “A schematic?” it had never occurred to me to put that in a blog post. It took a little fiddling to convert the file I have from the pattern into a JPG that I can put on the web – but it wasn’t anything too exciting.

So, here it is! I hope it gives you the info you need.

Schematic of shawl

BitterBlue – the reveal

It started innocently enough. One of my fabulous testers for In Uffish Thought sent me a note with her progress. She mentioned, off-hand, that she had to resist the urge to put a bead at the tip of each point.

I could have named this shawl Cascade Effect, I might keep that name for the future. But its name is BitterBlue.

One last tease

The process of knitting my sample for Uffish was quite enjoyable, I really like the shape and the knit was pretty simple. In the past I have explored different designs with the same shaping – why not with this shape? Of course, Uffish features the teeniest of cables, so the logical next step was lace (for me at least).

Beads and lace play so nicely together.

An alternate color scheme “Magic Carpet”

And if a few beads are good then more are better, right? Then the gradient yarn idea hit me and I thought to myself “Would it be possible to do a gradient in beads? What if the gradient in the beads went in opposition to the gradient in the yarn?” Yes, this is how my brain works.

This is in the namesake color BitterBlue

There had to be enough beads to make the gradient visible as a “thing” but I didn’t want to overkill. The final product is the result of a delicate balance of my personal desire for the sparkle and my desire to not be beading anymore. Because beading is time consuming – but oh so worth it.

This is the full size and shape

As I mentioned in my teaser post, this project represents the creative efforts of not just myself, but a couple of other very talented ladies. Kelly from The Unique Sheep and Ellen from Earthfaire contributed their amazing abilities in their respective fields to create this end result – which I think is the perfect meeting of yarn, beads & knitting. They have put together kits of these two color schemes and there are a few that will be available here if you missed out on the pre-order.

The pattern itself is fairly straightforward knitting. Knits, purls, yarn overs and basic decreases with some slipped stitches thrown in for good measure. I am not gonna lie, the beading slows you down – but it isn’t difficult. Just bust out your wee crochet hook and you are on your way. As with In Uffish Thought, the pattern is worked from one pointy end towards a long bind off (which naturally I beaded) and is therefore fairly flexible in sizing & yardage.

So many ways to wear this shawl!

Earthfaire is hosting a KAL for the shawl in September in their Ravelry group and I will definitely be there to answer questions and provide cheer-leading. But mostly to ooh & ahhh at the pretties. 😉 I could post about a dozen more pictures, but I think it better to go ahead and release the post into the wild. Hope you love it!

To wrap things up I wanted to send out an enormous Thank You to Lois. Lois is the reason why there is a sample in both of the colors, while I knit the original in the BitterBlue, I did not have the time to do the Magic Carpet version. Lois applied her experience with both beading and The Unique Sheep gradiances and produced the beauty that you see up there!