New Pattern: Mariposa Shawl

As promised, I am now releasing my Mariposa Shawl pattern. Mariposa Shawl is a feather and fan lace shawl worked in a delicate mohair blend yarn with a beaded border and beaded picot bind off. It is worked in three sections creating a shape that drapes nicely over the shoulders.




FINISHED MEASUREMENTS
43” wide and 16” long at the center back after blocking.

MATERIALS
S. R. Kertzer Ovation (75% mohair 25% silk; 186 yds/170 m per 20 g ball); color: 2135; 2 balls

NEEDLES
1 24” or longer US #6/4mm circular needle

NOTIONS REQUIRED
3 stitch markers
crochet hook for provisional CO
waste yarn for provisional CO
steel crochet hook size 12
275 size 6/0 seed beads
tapestry needle to weave in ends
blocking wires and/or pins for wet blocking

GAUGE
20 sts/22 rows = 4" in Stockinette stitch.

Japan relief and promotion

After seeing so many tragic news stories recently about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, I feel I need to do my part to bring relief. Current pattern promotion from March 15-31 is **buy 2 get 1 free** using coupon code **japanrelief**. Add three patterns to your cart and enter the coupon code at the end. 50% of pattern sales this month will be contributed to the Red Cross to assist the earthquake and tsunami survivors in Japan.

please, no new hobbies

The wedding day is almost here! In an effort to save money and also to channel my all around craftiness, I decided to make (with the help of my mother and future MIL) the bouquets and boutonierres for my wedding. Today fiance and I went to the downtown Los Angeles Flower Mart and bought some practice flowers. I have never worked with flowers before, so this was a totally new and somewhat scary experience for me. Luckily there wasn't a huge crowd so we were able to browse around all the vendors before choosing our flowers. I really want ranuculus, but they seemed to be at the end of their season. Many of the ones we saw looked old and wrinkly. I found some pretty white ones and bought a bunch. There were tons of spray roses in just about every color, so we bought a bunch of bright yellow ones. After getting some awesome french dips at Philippe The Original, we came home and got to work. I watched several videos (thank you, YouTube) on how to go about making the bouquets and boutonierres. Of course, the pros make it look easy enough. When I sat down and finally made something it wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. The experiment was on and we made several types of boutonierres, with singles flowers or mixing flowers, with leaves and without. Overall it was really fun and I think they turned out pretty well for a first try. Maybe I missed my calling and should have been a florist? Well, maybe I just have a new hobby now.

Sneak Peek at Upcoming Pattern

Where has the time gone? Oh yeah... planning a wedding! I'm getting married in 10 days! Well, to keep my sanity I have been working on a few knitting projects. One of them is a feather and fan lace shawl for my Matron of Honor. This lovely shawl will soon be a pattern available for purchase. See the sneak peek below!

Knitscene Winter/Spring 2011 - Camellia Shrug

The preview is up for Knitscene Winter/Spring 2011. I am lucky enough to have contributed a pattern is this issue, the Camellia Shrug. It is a lace shrug worked from the center out in a lace square, then continued into the sleeves with a lace motif at the wrist. It is worked in the heavenly soft Lorna's Laces Honor, a DK weight alpaca/silk blend.

There are so many awesome patterns in this issue, I don't know where to start! I'm in love with the Bas Relief Socks and I don't even particularly enjoy knitting socks, but I think I will gather up enough courage to work on these. I also love the vintagey look of the Piccadill Pullover. Big round of applause to the designers and editors at Knitscene for putting together a fantastic issue!

Weaving on a Triangle Loom

My Christmas present to myself this year was a 72" triangle loom from Weaver's Cupboard. I bought it early in December and have been busy with it ever since. I find weaving on a triangle loom intriguing- you begin at the outer points of the triangle and weave towards the center. It looks like it will never come out right but it magically always does. I usually use 5-8 different yarns- these projects are great stash busters. The nature of the weaving automatically creates a plaid pattern and is great for showing off different yarn textures. I love using my handspun yarn, the thick and thin aspect of my still-novice handspun yarn is an advantage in this kind of project.

I have made three shawls so far. The first is a green, blue and purple mix of handspun and commercially spun yarn. One of the commerical yarns is a 1" wide ribbon type of yarn that has long since lost its yarn band. I searched through ravelry to find out what it is but I had no luck. I learned the hard way in this project that using a mohair yarn probably isn't a good the best idea in a weaving project. The yarn kept sticking to itself and shedding like crazy, thus weakening the yarn. I even had to bust out my shed stick and grumbled throughout the whole weaving process. But I am quite happy with the result and already gave the shawl away as a Christmas present.

The second shawl is a pink, purple and teal mix that I made for myself. I used up a pink and purple tweedy handspun yarn that I made long ago. I avoided using fuzzy yarns in this project and it went much smoother than the previous project. The weave was pretty loose, but I found out the first time I wore this shawl that it is still very warm.

The third shawl is mustard, navy, olive and taupe. I wanted to make a shawl for my mom, who can't wear wool, so I really had to dig through my stash for non-wool yarns. I started off with a cone of variegated chenille that I have been wanting to use. It has shades of navy, periwinkle, olive and mustard. I looked around and found solid coordinating yarns in various textures: brown and navy Lion Brand Homespun, shiny rayon boucle in olive, smooth taupe bamboo, and mustard cabled cotton. This shawl also has a very open weave but still is warm to wear. I added fringe on this shawl and I think the end result is very dramatic.

I still have one more shawl planned, it will be in neutral shades of brown, blue and grey. It will be for my friend who has offered her services as a photographer for my wedding in March. She is six feet tall, so this will probably end up being more like a scarf to her!

FO: Essential Cardigan

What started out as an easy summer vacation project is now finally finished. I took a long break from this project and finally picked it up again a couple weeks ago to finish it up. The pattern is Essential Cardigan from Interweave Knits Summer 2010. The yarn is Elsbeth Lavold Silky Wool in Periwinkle Blue. This yarn has been sitting in my stash for many years and I thought this project would be the perfect use for it. I found lovely metal buttons on Textile Garden. The only modification I made was to make 4 buttonholes instead of 8. I bought the buttons before thinking up a project to use them for and only purchased 4!