"Granny's Shawl"

Hello! Here is my first entry for the Ankh-Morpork Knitter's Guild's Guild Wars 3, challenge 1, over at Ravelry. It's the Rippled Wrap, which is a free download pattern at Ravelry, by Cheri McEwen. I was immediately taken by the photo of this wrap when I was doing a search for crocheted shawl patterns at Ravelry, which showed it made in a rainbow of colours. I decided to make it using Noro Silk Garden sock wool that I had waiting for the right project, because the colours looked just right for this pattern. I used an I/9/5.50 hook to make a drapey fabric, although it's still fairly dense as well. The pattern is all double-crochet, with strategically-placed shells & skipped stitches making the ripples. Once you get the points established (which required careful following of the pattern) it's really easy to do & I enjoyed the process.

I'm thinking of putting a button at the front corner & using the opposite double-crochet loop to fasten it closed in front, which will keep it on very nicely. It's not huge, but the points come below my elbows & it will work very nicely as a wrap.

 I couldn't wait to be finished with this wrap, it was so much fun to make! I started it on May 6th & finished it today. I plan to make another one in some naturally dyed alpaca yarn (a finer yarn, which should give an even drapier fabric) that I found while rooting round in my sewing room today. And then I hit the sale Noro yarns at Halcyon because I could make a bunch of these! For gifts of course!!!

Naturally-Dyed Gallery

Hot on the heels of my recent natural-dyeing adventure posts, I thought I'd put up a gallery of things I've made from yarns that I've naturally dyed over the past few years. It was kind of like a treasure hunt, looking around the house, in the winter woolies basket, & on the bodies of my son & husband for things to photograph.

The photo at the top is of some Latvian-style mittens (patterns from Lizbeth Upitis' Latvian Mittens book) that I made about 7 years ago. Most of them were given as gifts or to charity knitting projects. They are a mix of indigo, cochenille, & yarrow-dyed yarns, & naturally brown & white yarns. (On a side note, I'm really glad that I have been photographing things on-and-off over the years, because I absolutely don't remember making these. I remember getting the book & getting all fired-up about making stuff, but have no real memory of making this many pairs of mittens...)

Another of the older photos that I found is this one, taken on a beach in California during a 2004 family trip to San Francisco. It's my version of the Mobi-Q Shawl, designed by Margo Carr, from Handwoven's Design Collection 19. I wove it on my Mighty Wolf loom from all handspun & naturally-dyed yarns & it's one of the crowning glories of my fibre-life. I had always wanted to weave something useful like this from my handspun, & the natural dyeing was just icing on the cake. I used all of my usual plant-based dyes and most of the wool is Corriedale spun on my Lendrum double-treadle wheel over a few years.  I took the shawl apart after a few years because it wasn't as functional as I'd hoped & is sitting in lavender-soaked cotton balls, waiting for an idea to strike for it's next incarnation.

This is the last of the real oldies, & the only photo I have of the Gansey sweater I designed & made for Brendan when he was 8 years old, specifically for this sailing vacation around Cape Cod. I indigo-dyed Lion Brand Fisherman Wool yarn & put Gansey patterns Brendan chose from a book on the front. When he outgrew it 3-4 years later, my mom wanted it (it fit her :) so she has it now.

Here's the vest I made for Charlie for our 20th anniversary in 2008. Many of the yarns are from the experimental dye pots from the summer of 2007, including birch bark, rhubarb leaves, & alkanet. He has a list at work of which stripe is which plant material because some folks like to know :) Also, I decided that just striping it would be boring, hence the patterned edges on each stripe.

The year before I made the anniversary vest, decided I wanted to make him a red vest (I usually make Charlie a vest for our anniversary because it's in early December, right when he needs warm clothes :). So I dyed Knitpicks merino worsted yarn with brazilwood (all skeins in the same dye bath) to get the heathered red of this vest. (A side note on the vest pattern: it's adapted from a WW2 Red Cross pattern that I found in Charlie's grandmother's things. I made it longer (he's a tall guy) & adapted it to knit in the round. I love it because the armhole & neck edgings are knit at the same time in garter stitch, so there's no pickup afterward. It's about the only vest pattern I use these days.)

Here are Charlie's snow-shoveling gloves, made from Elizabeth Zimmermann's "Winter Spruce" pattern, from Knitting Around.

And here are this year's winter gloves, made from shibori-dyed Knitpick's Gloss fingering weight yarn, dyed with yarrow & indigo, to get shades of yellow, blue, & green. The pattern is from Ann Budd's the knitter's handy book of patterns. I've placed them in the photo so you can't see the mends :( These gloves are destined to be felted & recycled as something else, as about 4 fingers have either mends or holes in them...

And, last of the photos of Charlie's stuff, a pair of shibori-dyed socks from Knitpicks' fingering-weight sock wool. The plants I used were birch bark & Rose of Sharon. Pattern- my own.

These are the front & back of my Adult Babies & Bears' Sweater from Cottage Creations. I used lots of odds & ends of the usual dyes & combos, & made sure that no 2 colours were next to each other for the whole sweater :)

This mitten & leg-warmer set were made from some yarn I dyed back in 2002. A friend had brought me some skeins of single-ply dk-weight yarn from New Zealand & I dyed them in golden marguerite, onion skins, brazilwood, indigo, & marguerite in indigo for green. These are the mittens I've used this winter, warm but light.

Here's another pic of my big flowers shawl, made with the popular motif from Nihon Vogue's motif book & Lion Brand Fisherman Wool, in lots of natural colours, after the 2007 dyeing. Among the plant dyes used were alkanet, indigo, yarrow, onionskins, brazilwood, rhubarb leaves, birch bark, & safflower.

I posted this bag back in September. I made it from Knitpick's bulky weight yarns from dye pots I ran the summer of 2008. I noted that the yarrow dyepot lasted 3 full dyebaths before exhausting, giving very nice golds-to-yellows. The pale red is brazilwood exhaust, with the rusty-red being from the first dye bath. The purple & green were brazilwood & yarrow over-dyed in indigo.

For some other finished examples from naturally-dyed yarns, please see my Shibori 1 & Shibori 2 posts. Let me know if you're inspired to try natural dyeing!

Splashy Flowers Shawl

Before I get to part 2 of the shibori dyeing, I wanted to post the shawl I finished this week. It's based on the Splashy Flowers Scarf from Kathy Merrick's Crochet in Color. The shawl in the book is made from Noro Silk Garden. I made it from Lion Brand Amazing, which has similar long colour shifts, but is fuzzier, less expensive (!), & is supposedly machine-washable. This part worried me a bit, because usually machine-washable yarn doesn't block well, but I wanted to try anyway. Fortunately, it blocked just fine :)

shawl blocking after a soak in the dishpan & a spin in the washer

I turned it from scarf to shawl by adding one more set of motifs, making it 5 large motifs across (including side motifs) and 4 small across, to fill in the gaps. I used a K/10.5/6.5mm hook as well. It ended-up about 72"x18", 5 large motifs across & 14 large motifs long, which works fine for a shawl. It took me 4 days to make it. The only other change I made was to begin each motif with a magic circle, which is often used in Japanese crochet. I'm not fond of crocheting into the first chain to make circles- don't like how it looks- so I prefer this method, although it takes longer to tighten up the ring of yarn (especially with fuzzy yarn). There were loads of ends, too, but I worked them in as I went, so when I was done with the last motif, I was done with the whole shawl, except for blocking, & that doesn't happen very often.

shawl in progress- you can see the gaps where the small motifs fill in

Colour-wise, I had 1 skein each of a bunch of colourways of Amazing sitting around (which was what really inspired this project- yarn looking for something to become) so I used 3 different colourways (Ruby, Wildflower, & Aurora) for all of the large motifs. I decided that making all of the small motifs in one colourway would look best, so I used Rainforest- it stays some shade of green throughout, which pulled the other colours together nicely I think.

It turned out really well- soft, fuzzy, drapey, & fun to wear. I liked making this project a lot, but it may end up as a gift, because what I really want to make from these motifs is a poncho. So, I have more Amazing in the house, & after a bit of a break, I'm ready to give it a go. Stay tuned...

Prayer Shawls

As I mentioned in my "Seven Socks" post, I'm on the mend from back surgery. For the past couple of weeks I have been at that part of  recovery where I am doing pretty much everything I was doing before surgery, but I still get tired doing it all & sit a lot because I'm too tired to move! Since I'm sitting, I want to be doing something useful, and I found inspiration in a recent sermon at church. Our minister has been away on a short medical leave & one Sunday we had a guest speaker, a member of the congregation, who told us about her experiences surviving breast cancer. One of the things she mentioned in her list of things that supported & comforted her along the way was the chemo shawl that a group of us had woven for her (on my portable Ashford 24" rigid-heddle loom). It occurred to me that making & perhaps even getting a prayer shawl ministry started at my church would be a good way to cope with this part of my own recovery.

I decided to make a few ahead, then offer them to our minister when she got back from her leave, & see what she thought of the idea. Our off & on again craft group at church had started another shawl a year & a half ago, which was still on the loom half-woven, upstairs in my sewing room, so that was at least half a shawl to get going with. I looked through my stash for appropriate yarn & realised that I needed to make a trip to JoAnn's (hurt me, hurt me!) because the yarn best for these projects (easy-care yarn that can be machine washed & dried) is what I tend to buy the least of, being a natural-fibre sort of person. However, one of my fave yarns to weave blankets & shawls with (especially for gifts) is Lion Brand Homespun yarn. Although it's 100% acrylic, it is thick enough to work-up quickly (I weave it on a 5 dent heddle) & puffs magically when it's washed & dried by machine. It's very soft & the colours are really nice. Brendan's first weaving projects when he was 11 years old (scarves & a blanket) were made with Homespun, & when his grandmother was going into hospice 1 1/2 years ago, he brought the blanket to her so she would know he was thinking of her.

11-year-old Brendan weaving a blanket on the Mighty Wolf

I already had at least 3 more warp chains measured for woven shawls, & my stash did contain enough Homespun for a couple crocheted shawls to get me started, so I looked for promising stitch patterns in Schapper's "The Complete Book of Crochet Stitch Designs". My friend Momo had recently made a kitchen mat from worsted cotton yarn & pattern #493, so I thought I'd start there. I swatched a few needle sizes & it became obvious that I needed a big needle to make a drapey fabric from this pattern, so I went with my largest (at the time) a size P hook.

I decided to combine some purple with the red to make it more interesting. The resulting shawl is a bit thick & on the edge of what I consider acceptable drape for a shawl, but it's warm & cuddly for sure. It used about 4 skeins of the Homespun to make.

A week ago Sunday, the day before my shopping trip to buy yarn, we discovered out that our minister's short medical leave had been extended due to complications :(  So I decided then & there that the first rainbow shawl would be for her. I went out Monday after taking Brendan to school & bought 2 skeins each of 7 colours for the rainbow. I also bought some Woolease Thick & Quick Super Bulky to match a couple of skeins I had leftover from another project, to see how it worked up as a shawl. When I got home I swatched Schapper's pattern #498, a ripple pattern, and started crocheting a rainbow.

One thing I find when I'm learning a new crochet pattern is that it takes more than a swatch to give me the sense of the pattern. So casting-on and making the first few rows are my shake-down cruise, crochet-wise. I do a lot of ripping & have to be very patient with myself. By the time I've repeated the pattern a few times (on 72"-80" worth of crochet...) it starts singing itself in my head & I stop making mistakes. Yay! I really like how the first rainbow shawl turned out.

 I worked 2 full pattern repeats in each colour, for a total of 21 rows, over ~72" inches fabric length, using the size P hook again. I found that this pattern, which is all double-crochet & chains, is much drapier than the wave pattern, which has rows of single crochet as well lacy stitches, even though they were made with the same yarn & the same size hook. So the rest of the patterns I've picked-out to crochet are all double-crochet, to make them as drapey as possible. The other thing I found out is that I can't just crochet over the ends as I change colours, since the scale is so big with this yarn & hook. So I've been working the ends in carefully after the shawl is done. Machine washing & drying helps to "set" the ends in place, too, & that's how I'm finishing them all, so there won't be any unpleasant surprises for the recipients.

I also used the ripple pattern to make a shawl using the Woolease Thick & Quick Super Bulky (say that one fast...). Fortunately, while I was buying yarn I also bought the biggest needle they had (a size Q), because that was the only needle that made something resembling a drapey fabric from this yarn. It was not easy for my hands to use this needle- I really had to adapt my usual crochet technique, since each stitch was so huge.

It worked-up in a couple of days, & I used 5 skeins of yarn, making 1 1/2 pattern repeats of each colour, for a total of 15 rows. It's very soft & cuddly, but I will not use this yarn again because my hands ached afterward! At least there isn't much in the way of leftovers...

For the second rainbow shawl I decided to use Schapper pattern #17. This shawl is 21 rows by ~72" as well.

And then, last Friday I finished weaving the shawl that was begun 1 1/2 years ago! It took me all morning to finish weaving & then make the twisted fringe along the edges after cutting it off the loom. I really like the colour (Homespun "Harvest") & it drapes very nicely as well. It's about 21" wide & 72" long. (By the way, thanks to Brendan, my wonderful model for the finished shawl shots :).

I sent the first rainbow shawl to my minister on Friday & I hope she'll get it by today. I also hope that it will be the beginning of a new ministry at church, to bring comfort to those in need, by the work of loving hands.

The Multnomah Shawl

This summer, my friend Gail was surfing the net looking for shawl patterns & came up with this jewel: The Multnomah Shawl. It's a little shawlette made with just one 100g skein of sock wool, & hers came out so beautifully I had to make one myself.

I have been knitting shawls for quite a few years, & have not only designed my own shawls but taught workshops on how to design your own shawl (not to blow my own horn, but to add perspective :). This pattern is quite lovely & the addition of the lace occurs quite naturally, just when you're ready for a bit of a challenge, after knitting along mindlessly in garter for a while. I changed only one thing in the pattern, which was to make the edge increases M1 rather than "knit through front & back of loop", because I really prefer the look of the "make 1" increase.

I made this one in KnitPicks Stroll tonal, Spruce colour, & I had to use a size #2 needle to make gauge (down 2 or 3 sizes from what was suggested). Although I love the look of Feather & Fan (the name of the lace used in this shawl) it's one of those lace patterns that I find easy to mess-up if I'm not paying attention. I found this out the hard way a few years ago when I used it as the pattern for an enormous handspun stole- I worked very hard on that shawl, with all the ripping, until I got the clue: add markers between the repeats of lace, so if I messed up, I knew much sooner & only had to rip back a repeat or so's worth of stitches rather than the whole darn thing. I did the same on this shawl & was glad I did!

A new experience with this shawl was that I have never really just cast-off a shawl edge, but usually crochet loops or  make knitted-edgewise lace for a stretchy, blockable edge. I used a #4 needle for the cast-off, so the edge would be loose, and although you can't really block sock wool very much (thanks to the nylon content), I blocked it anyway for a finished look.

This shawl will be a gift, mostly because Christmas is coming (!) and I don't need another shawl... but I do need presents to give! I think the next one (it took 6 weeks to make only because I was working along very desultorily, having loads of other projects laying about) will be my own version, with a different lace edging. It's a quick-to-make gift and, as I mentioned at the top, really pretty!

Red Crochet Shawl

This shawl is from the Summer 2010 issue of Interweave Crochet. It was on the cover, actually, but all in blue. (I apologise for the poor photo- I took it on the dining room table, which was, for once, nearly clear &, for once, had a white cloth on it.) Being an iconoclastic sort, I don't usually make anything I see in magazines or books, at least exactly as printed...  I have been a knitwear designer for more than 15 years & am pretty hung-up on making my own designs. But, being newish to crochet design (although I've been crocheting for ~42 years...) I've only made stoles since taking up the hook again, & wanted to try my hand at triangle shaping. So I decided to make something from a pattern for the experience (thank goodness there were charts...!).

 I looked in the stash baskets for the right amount of yarn- of course there wasn't quite enough in any one colour, of the right weight anyway. So I found 2 skeins of one colour & one of another, all the same weight &, gasp, even the same fibres & brand. This yarn is Knitpicks Gloss (merino & silk blend) laceweight yarn, in raisin (discontinued now & on sale when I bought it, hence the 2 balls of it, heh, heh) and the red- can't remember the exact name. Either way, I thought they harmonised nicely when I held the balls together & they indeed harmonise well in the shawl, I think. 

It took maybe 6 weeks to make, not consistently working on it, though (I always have at least 4-5 projects going at once). As I worked along I found lots of things I might have done differently, but I like the pattern overall. The flowers in the main body & edging are made over 2 rows for each flower, which was kind of neat. It blocked very well & dried quickly, & it has a lovely drape. When I blocked it I was showing a friend how to block, so it was fun as well as educational :)

Like a lot of needleworkers, I began with crochet, taught by grandma when I was 10-ish years old (maybe earlier). I crocheted all through my teen years, & progressed to crocheting lace as I got older. But I ran into the difficulty of not being able to make anything useful (not purely decorative) other than crocheted washcloths & potholders, because of the thick fabric. I tried making a sweater but it just didn't drape or look the way I wanted it to. When a good friend was able to re-introduce me to knitting in my early 20's (another skill left-handed me had learned at a tender age from left-handed grandma) I dropped the hook & didn't pick it up again except for crocheted edgings for shawls (very useful). I didn't think much of crocheting until April 2009, when I was in Japan, shopping for crochet books for a Japanese friend back in the US. There was this really cute motif book & all the patterns were charted!!! And the colours... I haven't looked back since, and knitting has just has to share me with crochet these days.

Perhaps the most fun of taking up crochet again, after all these years, is the joy of deconstruction & learning new technical skills. In order to design with crochet, I need to be able to deconstruct the actual stitch patterns to see how they will fit, either together, or in a particular item or garment. Thinking about the fabric that crochet makes- how to make it thin enough for shawls or sweaters, how to use thicker yarns to create interesting lacey things- is really absorbing & rewarding. Add the ease of changing colours in crochet, & it has become *the new obsession*.