{"id":1689,"date":"2007-03-05T09:59:37","date_gmt":"2007-03-05T14:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.abbysyarns.com\/wordpress\/?p=75"},"modified":"2007-03-05T09:59:37","modified_gmt":"2007-03-05T14:59:37","slug":"desert-flower-shawl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abbysyarns.com\/webshop\/2007\/03\/05\/desert-flower-shawl\/","title":{"rendered":"Desert Flower Shawl"},"content":{"rendered":"

Huzzah, I have actually Finished A Project(tm). Its primary purpose was to show what one could do with a few of my Luxury Batts, spinning them in different ways. So here we go:<\/p>\n

Phase 1: Fiber<\/h4>\n

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40% camel down, 40% mixed silks, 20% superfine merino, with firestar added after that to give it a bit of sparkle. I pulled 2 batts out of the to-be-sold pile, and spun them up preserving the colour separations: the sandstone yellow, the painted desert pink, and then the surprising lavender. I put each batt onto one bobbin, and then plied those together into…<\/p>\n

Phase 2: Yarn<\/h4>\n

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2-ply fingering weight or so, and it looks like I recorded neither the weight nor the yardage in my little notebook! It was two batts, so probably the original skein was around 3 ounces or a little over.<\/p>\n

Phase 3: Start Knitting<\/h4>\n

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I started with some size 3 US straight knitting needles, and a small rectangular center made up of three Shetland-style lozenges worked in garter stitch, from charts in Sharon Miller’s Heirloom Knitting<\/a> book. With the three lozenges done working back and forth, I switched to double pointed needles and picked up stitches around the three other sides. I put a zig-zag around the lozenges, still garter, then switched to doing it stockinette for some cats-paws (again from Sharon Miller’s book). After three rounds of cats-paws, I stuck in a round of ferny trees, again from the same book. Once it got too big for the dpns, I switched to a circular needle and placed stitch markers at each mitered corner. <\/p>\n

By this time, I was into the last colour of the yarn, the lavender, which meant I’d used up two thirds of it, and it was just not going to be enough to make it remotely shawl-like — in itself not a huge problem since the objective was basically “giant swatch” — but there was’n’t going to be enough of the lavender to complete what I’d figured on putting at the outside, another round of lozenges, and cast off. <\/p>\n

Phase 4: Spin More Yarn<\/h4>\n

What with running out of yarn, I had three possible options, all of which involved pillaging the sale inventory further. <\/p>\n