"Sunray Shawl" - Free Knitting Pattern!

Wohooooo I just published my design "Sunray Shawl" two days ago as a free ravelry download.
Somehow it has become super popular... thank you all for your comments, and for taking the pattern into your favorites!
I can't believe it!

More than 800 hearts already and Top 3 position in the ravelry "hot right now" click charts...

Find the pattern here:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/sunray-shawl-2

Many people keep asking me about the yarn that I used. It is my own handspun yarn, from a roving out of Polwarth/Silk dyed by the wonderful Sidi from http://sidispinnt.ch/

** Epona **

By the end of 2014 I took the Craftsy online class "Shawlscapes" which is taught by Stephen West.  I really enjoyed this class, Stephen is such a funny instructor and I had to watch all the lessons at once!

In the class you learn how to design your own top-down shawl with Stephen West's techniques. He talks about how to use increases (yo, m1r/m1l, ktbl etc.) and distribute them in order to achieve certain shawl shapes (triangle, long wingspan, semi-circular, shawls with more than one "point", etc.). How to play with color, how to go crazy and improvise a bit. And finally there are a lot of helpful tricks that you can use also in other projects than shawls.

Well, after watching this, of course I wanted to design a shawl. And I wanted to make it for my sister!
I took notes of it too, but I'm not sure I could write a pattern out of them :-P
I'm not even sure if I could knit it again to be exactly the same... :- S


Here it is:

The yarn is  Merino 150 from Lang Yarns (Sport weight) and I used 4.0 mm needles.

I did "double increases" at the beginning and end of the row to get a wider wingspan. In the beginning I used yarn-overs and decreases to create this wavy "peacock" pattern. Afterwards there are some garter stitch sections, along with intuitive color changes to create the stripes. The shawl was finished by a section of seed stitch followed by two ribs of garter stitch in contrasting colors, and finally a pretty i-cord bindoff (was my first time, and I loved it!)

The finished scarf got the name "Epona".

I like to generate random names using this website here: *click* 

When it came up with the name "Epona", I thought it couldn't be more perfect. My sister is the biggest horse lover I know :)

I also made some fingerless gloves for my sister, to match the shawl, but forgot to take pictures of them...

They are in the lavender purple shade and are finished with a dark brown i-cord like the shawl.

 

Here's the link to the shawl in my ravelry projects. If you also watched "Shawlscapes" and got inspired, I would be happy to hear from you and see the shawl that you produced :)

Spindled Leftie

This week I have been a good girl and finished many things :)

Here is another UFO that landed this week:

It is a "Leftie"(pattern from Martina Behm). The pattern originally calls for Fingering weight yarn, but as this is not my favorite weight of yarn, I decided to go a bit thicker :) The yarn that i had spun had about 9wpi  (somewhere between DK and worsted weight) and I knit with 4.5mm needles.

The colorful yarn was originally spun during the Tour de Fleece 2014, it was a leftover from a roving that I once dyed for a different project.

It was only 43 grams (97 meters), but I loved the colors so much that I wanted to turn them into something big.

Then I found the Leftie pattern and thought it was perfect!

For the "background" yarn I decided to spin a Merino/Babycamel mixture (50:50) in natural color.

And as I was so happy with my new spindle from the famous German wood turner Matthes, I decided to spin everything on the spindle.

That took a while.... so here some photos of the progress :)

I love the result! It's so decorative!

Camel/Silk Artyarn Shawl

Last week I could finish a project which I am really in love with...

More than a year ago I got this fiber from Sidi. It is the "waste" that is produced during the industrial combing process to make combed top. It is a mixture of camel and silk. Camel naturally has a very short staple, but it is extremely soft and light. Silk is a long and sleek fiber, but as this here is the "waste" of the production, there are a lot of knobs, short pieces and also pieces of silk cocoons in it.

Camel / Silk "Bandabgang" (waste from the industrial combing process)

I decided to dye it in some colors that remind me of a beach in Ubatuba, Praia Vermelha.
I chose the colors green (for the jungle), brown yellow, orange, red, and different shades of ocean blue. One part I left undyed, it should be the color of the sand :)
The red comes because on that particular beach you can find many many red and orange shells. Also the name "vermelha" means red.
I apologize for the flood of pictures that coms now... but there are just too many good pictures of that beach :)

the fibers after dyeing

So much to the colors :)

Then I took my hand carders to prepare the fibers for spinning. This has two effects - to make the fibers more organized and easier to spin, but also to mix and blend the colors and to make transitions...

fibers are spread on the hand carder while blending different colors

when finished carding, the fibers are rolled u with the help of two sticks (knitting needles)

Like this I made about 100 fiber rolls, called "rolags". Unfortunately I don't have a picture of all of them together, because I started to spin some, before I finished making all of them :)

The nice thing about these little fiber packages is, that you can build up a gradient or stripes, by spinning them in the order you like...
And then came the spinning wheel!
Due to the knotty fiber the thread became a bit uneven and has a lot of texture.

 

How to ply this single?
This question was in my head for many weeks... I wanted to keep the gradient, but a navajo ply would just look weird... Then I came to the decision to take a thin silk thread that is usually used for sewing, and to ply it with this. I chose a natural beige color. While plying I held the silk thread tight and let the camel/silk thread go on it loosely with a slight angle. By this I obtained a funny spiral yarn, with many bobbles and knobs in between:

Almost at the end! :)
For almost half a year I had the yarn and didn't know what to knit from it... it should be something special. But there were just not the right knitting patterns out there for this yarn...
So I have decided to just cast on 3 stitches and start to increase in a regular way to make a semi-circular shawl. Along the way I picked up some shell beads and knitted them in.
And for the border I got an inspiration at my yarn shop, a pretty wave pattern...

I love the scarf! It's so soft and light and warm... incredible. And with all this story behind it, it really is something special.

Danke, Sidi, für dieses Geschenk. Ich hatte so viel Freude damit :)