09/26/2018

Sharon asked awhile back if she could have a shawl for her bday/xmas gift this year. Totally fine and fun with me! And this time we decided to work together on something, so we went back and forth on shawl patterns, and then she picked out the yarn. I tried dyeing some to see if I could come up with a dark green she’d like, but she really liked the look of the Madelinetosh TML Cactus, so that’s what we went with. (Especially since there was a sale!)

Got three skeins of Tosh Merino Light in Cactus during Madelinetosh’s Labor Day Weekend Sale. Took them forever to ship it out, and they must have chosen the slowest shipping ever. Ordered it Sept 2, and it arrived Sept 21.

I offered up some of my old, barely used light colored TML yarns for the contrast, and she really liked Paper. While I really liked the Thyme with the Cactus, she was right that more contrast would be better for this pattern.

I knit up a sample swatch, more to check colors and for me to learn some of the stitches, rather than to check gauge.

Trudging through the first section of 18 repeats of a 4 row pattern. It’s a bit dull, but this isn’t a lace shawl, and it can be done while watching tv.

10/06/2018

Making surprisingly fast progress. It helps that the rows are either plain knitting across, or very easy to memorize repeats. Sharon’s choice in yarn/colors is working out great as well.

Just starting the first “flowers” section (right now they look more like W’s).

10/17/2018

Omg I hate “repeat Row 4” so much! Lol. Thankfully I’m on my last row of the main flowers section - just giving hand a break from…all…the….purling!

11/17/2018

Panic attack as the dark green dye starts bleeding out into the first rinse water!! The water was barely luke warm, and sooo much dye came out - you could barely see the shawl in the tub.

Unfortunately, even with TEN rinsings (using Soak in a couple of them), the green dye from the Cactus colorway stained the white (Paper) yarn a light green - it looks more like the Thyme colorway now.

11/25/2018

Sharon loves it!

Even though the contrast wasn’t as strong as we’d originally discussed (because of the green dye bleed/tinting the white yarn), she was still very happy with it and kept it wrapped around herself non-stop after receiving it.

Oh, and this shawl is CRAZY long/wide!!! More than 10’ long easily. I felt like other’s who’d knit it had a taller (and therefore possibly narrower) shawl, but I patted it out after soaking so that the little honeycombs would have the best shape, and let that dictate the rest of the shape. If I’d tugged it to be a taller/narrower shawl, the honeycombs would’ve been distorted.