Sunday, November 25, 2012

Cats and Shawls


I've been cranking out some shawls in my downtime.  Louie the Cat is modeling Cameo, a pattern so fun to knit I had to make two of them.  Louie is modeling my second version of this shawl: this one was made with a variety of fingering weight scraps and has a beaded lace section.  I applied the beads to the stitches with a tiny crochet hook, one method outlined in this tutorial.


 The pleasure of this shawl is that it's knit almost entirely in garter stitch and requires very little attention.  It's perfect autopilot knitting.

 
My original Cameo was knit from Kroy sock yarn and some vintage fingering weight wool crepe.  I'd been saving the pink and blue Kroy for awhile, waiting for the perfect (non-sock) project. This shawl was a gift for my friend Catherine.


Even the lace is easy to knit in this pattern, and the results are pretty nice.


Bunny says it makes a nice pillow too.



Catherine gave me these great lace weight color cards, which were in her grandmother's weaving stash.  I love the color gradation, and I'm looking for a shawl pattern where I can use them together.
Right now Stephen West's Spectra is a strong contender.

 In October I knitted this free shawl pattern for my friend Bernadette's birthday.  It has bits of silk, alpaca, lambswool, and other nice yarns. 

 I'm a sucker for stripes these days. 


I made a really basic shawl from some special hand dyed yarn I bought at a fiber fair last year. The yarn has a beautiful hand and and I love the luminosity of the colors.



 If you've had enough shawls for now, here's one more cat: Mr. Bob.  I came home from shopping and left a bag out for the cats.  You'd have thought I'd brought home Disneyland.


Economy Block and Large-Scale Fabrics

Recenlty I decided to take out and use the stash of Asian-themed fabrics I'd set aside.  Many of them are large scale, so I wanted to fe...