I’ve wanted to knit a shawl for Thea for ages. It isn’t easy to choose things for her. The fibre has to be completely non-itchy b/c she has extremely sensitive skin and a lot of allergies. I’m frequently surprised by the things she does or doesn’t like - although, she usually likes things that I choose for myself. The colours she likes are not the same as the colours I usually like. She chooses purples and Aqua and orange and blues frequently (although not usually all at once). I would like the shawl to be somewhat subtle and stylish, so that it is versatile, but still have colour interest.

I’ve decided to try a purple fade b/c I love the look of faded garments and I think they keep things interesting whilst knitting. Miss Babs has produced a perfect muted purple fade and my limited experience with her Yummy Two Ply is that it is extremely soft and non itching - I hope Thea thinks the same. I also love the idea of having a contrasting fade in the other direction, so I chose a neutral. Now, I had already chosen the Audra pattern b/c I loved the idea of the contrasting weights and textures in the stripes, so I decided that keeping the contrasting laceweight reasonably plain was probably a good idea. I have ordered a silk laceweight, also from Miss Babs. Now, I’m really not sure that they will all go together so I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my Miss Babs parcel. There are a few alternative Colourmart yarns that I have on hand that I might need to substitute in …

Alrighty, the yarn has arrived and I couldn’t be happier - it is all beautiful and soft, no substitutions will be needed! : ) Now for some planning b/c I want to use all of my fade colours so I will have to work out how many rows etc in the pattern sections and figure out how I will do the actual fades …

In the pattern, C1 is used for the cast on and bind off and the lace sections, so this will be my Beachcomber. C2 is the fingering weight used for striping, so this will be my Vineyard. C3 is the laceweight (striping sections), so this is my Buckle Up.

The pattern states that 420yd of each yarn is used. This is fine for my laceweight as it isn’t dyed in a sequence so I can just knit it until I’m finished the garment. If I use up all the gradient yarn, however, the garment will be humongous and that will limit its use. Thea is a small person! So, there are 798yd total in each of the fade sets. I only want to use 420/798=0.53 of the fade sets. So, if I can use just a smidgeon over half of each of the miniskeins in the fade sets I should be about right : ) Now I need to figure out how I will actually perform the fades. Probably one of the simplest ways is to divide the amount to be used of each fade colour into thirds. This way, you can have the end colours 2/3 plain and 1/3 fading and the middle colours 1/3 fade, 1/3 plain, 1/3 fade. Now I need to do some weighing of yarn in order to set all of this up!
… I hope Thea likes it! …

Now, each of the miniskeins in the fade sets is 40-42g. In order for the garment to be the right size I need just a smidgeon over half of each, so let’s say 24g. For the fade I need to divide the 24g into thirds in order to know when to start the actual fade sections. I figure a little slip knot at 8g, 16g and 24g should do it! That seems tiny …

Note to self: be very careful not to let skein tangle when you have to keep weighing it during ball winding!

First colour off the rank is Wentletrap (lightest colour from the Beachcomber gradient)

Ooooh! I realised after winding a couple of the miniskeins that dividing into thirds for the fade is not going to work b/c the striping to achieve the fade will actually be twice that size b/c there is both the old skein and the new skein in those sections. It would have been better to divide into quarters and have (for most of the miniskeins) 1/4 of the length fade stripe (will take the same number of rows as the non fading section b/c of the other colour), 1/2 the length of the skein non fading, then the last 1/4 for the next fading stripe section. This would mean that the skeins on each end would have 3/4 of their length non-fading. Anyway, I’ve basically decided to eyeball it, keeping in mind that I will need to knit a little bit past my last marker in the skein in order to go down the “quarters” path. I should be able to go by the number of stripes in the pattern once I get the first bit sorted. The other way of doing this would be to see the total number of rows that each of the gradient sets is to be used for and dividing the pattern into sets of rows for each colour and each fading stripe section - I might do this with the lace sections here, for which I am using the Beachcomber Gradient. I will sort it out when I get there …

…so I decided that it will be easier to divide the number of rows over which the purple is used into the appropriate number of sections. There are six different mini skeins in the fade so that means there will be five transitional sections. Eleven sections total. My figuring was that there were 84 ‘double rows’ in total that would use purple, so 84 divided by 11 is 7.6. So some sections will have 8 purple stripes and some sections will have 7.

For the actual transitional fade sections, I did the first row across in the new colour and came back in the old. The next purple stripe was entirely old. Then alternating one new stripe and one old stripe for a few stripes. Stripe seven will be the new colour. Stripe eight has the new colour going across and the old colour coming back - and that’s the entire section! I haven’t quite figured out how I am going to fix the problem of some sections needing only seven stripes, but we will get there somehow.

Now the lace parts of the shawl also need to be divided into eleven sections for that fade … There are 144 rows total in the lace (not counting the ends of the shawl). 144 rows divided by 11 sections for fading is around 13 rows per miniskein or fade transition section …

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Thoughts

Gauge is all over the place. This is at least partly due to the fact that there was a large hiatus in the time that I knit this where I wasn’t knitting at all. As a consequence, the first section (darkest stripes) is at a tighter gauge than the rest of it, and my gauge varied throughout. Overall, the tension was much looser than I usually knit and this is reflected in the fact that I used much more yarn than the pattern states is needed and I am pretty sure the garment is bigger than stated … But maybe I blocked it more firmly than required, too.

This is the first time I have done “proper” lace knitting. I think it was good to have it broken up into small chunks and to not have to worry about complex shaping whilst doing it. The first two lace sections went OK as long as I concentrated a bit. My concentration must have slipped by the last lace section, though, b/c I redid the first few rows several times. I won’t say it is error-free now, but I don’t think there are any mistakes that are glaring.

I love the finished product, and, more importantly, Thea does too (I think)! It is beautifully soft and should be nice and warm in colder weather (the over 40°C heat that we’ve had whilst I’ve been knitting it was not so enjoyable). Having said that, it isn’t exactly how I pictured the final garment. This is mainly due to my colour selection. I think the mottling on the background silk is a bit more stark than I realised so that it intrudes a bit on the purple fade. The neutral fade doesn’t have as complete a range as I thought, so the darkest colour isn’t that dark. Also, the lightest colour in the purple fade isn’t that light. This means that the garment has one end with a lot of contrast - very dark purple stripes and very light lace - and one end with not so much contrast - mid dark neutral lace and lightish purple stripes. The lightest purple end appears a bit darker b/c of the grey silk mixed in, too. What I had originally thought of was both ends being high in contrast.

The only intentional modification to the pattern is that for the last edge I used the darkest purple colour in order to try to balance out the tones. Thea thought it would be the best colour to use, too. If the darkest of the neutral fade colours had been deeper I would have probably used that.
… Oh, and also using a plain silk rather than silk/mohair laceweight and the use of fading are modifications, too, I suppose …

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Leftover Weights

Mottled grey silk: 54g
Purple fade set: 84g
Neutral fade set: 98g

Purple (lightest to darkest):

1. 18g
2. 12g
3. 14g
4. 14g
5. 14g
6. 12g

Neutral (lightest to darkest):

1. 17g
2. 16g
3. 14g
4. 15g
5. 16g
6. 23g

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Yarn

The Yummy 2 ply is the softest, most non-itchy woollen (merino) yarn I have ever come across. I can’t recommend it highly enough. The colours are beautiful. The fades are constructed amazingly well with the yarns blending beautifully. Definitely yarn that I want to use a lot of in the future.

The Wild Silk is really interesting! It is a little bit heavier than most lace weights. It also has a halo, which is really unusual for silk yarn! It is still lustrous and drapey as you would expect from silk, though, and I would still love to use it again.

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Pattern

The pattern is beautifully presented and set out very clearly. I really can’t fault it!