About a month ago I found myself in the enviable position of knitting two gorgeous shawls simultaneously! How lucky was I?! Here’s the story, morning glory:
It was really hard to settle on what I wanted to knit after finishing my Miter Madness Blanket. Sure I had a million projects on the needles, but I wanted something new and fresh. Something that wouldn’t take forever to finish. Then I fell in love with Romi Hill‘s Red Rock Canyon Shawl and started dreaming about it. Should I buy new yarn? But there is SO MUCH YARN in this house. I decided to stash dive and lo and behold I found a bunch of semi-solid colors of my beloved STR Lightweight. PERFECT! I actually settled on three colors, because much of my STR is older and my skeins only had about 360 yds and the pattern asked for at least 385 for both colors. I am so glad I went with three!
I used Passive Agressive Green for the main color, alternated stripes in Pond Scum and Sweet Pea, and did the lace sections in Sweet Pea. The three colorways worked GREAT together!
The Sweet Pea has a touch of yellow/green running through it and the Passive Agressive Green plays nicely with the Pond Scum. I love it! The shawl was also a very enjoyable knit. Do you like to purl? Then this shawl is for you! It’s a very textured shawl with lots of purling through the back loops. I personally love to purl so it worked well for me.
About a week or so after I started Red Rock, some old time knitbloggers started talking about doing a mystery shawl – you know the kind where you get a clue each week and you know vaguely what the project will look like – triangular shawl or whatever – but you don’t know until you knit it what it will really be? Yeah. One of those. Not only were they doing the mystery shawl, but most of the bloggers involved were doing it in Black Trillium Fibre’s Gradient Yarn – which I’ve been wanting to use for a while. You can guess what happened next – I cast on Kirsten Kapur’s (Through the Loops) Mystery Shawl in the Tidewater Gradient.
It was my first mystery knit, but it won’t be my last. I’m not one to knit stuff I don’t really like, so it was definitely a step outside my comfort zone, but I trust Kirsten implicitly and I absolutely LOVED the yarn. Add to it I was knitting along with some of my oldest blogger friends and it was like I was transported back in time. While I love Ravelry for what it can offer you in terms of knitting tips and tricks for patterns, there’s nothing like a real time knit along where everybody screws up and rips back and figures out how to get through the pattern together.
When I was done with a clue for the week, I would hop back over to my Red Rock Shawl. It worked out really well going between the two. There wasn’t as much confusion as I feared – as long as I didn’t mix up the charts I was good to go.
The tidewater colorway – a definite blue/green/teal sea color, has turned out to be kind of hard to photograph. Every picture came out too blue, and then adjusting it made it too green, but I think this is pretty accurate. I alternated between mini skeins (you moved onto the next color with each clue) for a row or two and when I was knitting it, there was a pretty well-defined stripe that I did not like, but now that it’s done and blocked, you can’t really see it. I’m very happy with how it turned out!
And now I have two new shawls – and a new way to wear them! For whatever reason (like I’m clueless sometimes) I didn’t think to wear this small-ish shawls like a cowl. I love cowls! So now I can’t wait to wear my new shawl/cowls. Bring on the cold weather! (Yes I said it. This summer hasn’t been so bad, but I am definitely more of a cold weather girl.)
Red Rock Canyon Shawl (raveled here.)
Knitblogger Reunion Shawl (raveled here.)
You know what’s funny? The Red Rock Canyon Shawl was originally one of Romi’s mystery shawl patterns! And I loved knitting these shawls so much, I started Germinate, by Kirsten Kapur, which was also one of her mystery shawl patterns!
I ask you, who doesn’t need a little mystery in their lives? Hope your Summer is filled with knitting and MYSTERY! Thank you for stopping by!
PS – Click on the pictures to see them bigger. They look so much better that way!
Your shawls are stunning. I love the colours!
I’m on a bit of a lace shawl kick myself!! I’ve got 2 from Boo Knits on the go and a very old Sun Ray table cloth I’m going to use as a shawl.
I should really cast on something simple as a pallet cleanser!!
What’s one more WIP between friends !? 😉
It is kind of an alternate universe to hear you extolling the virtues of Mystery Shawls, but I am SO HAPPY you decided to knit along with us. That was really fun and just what I needed. Onwards to Germinate!
P.S. I wear my shawls exactly this way and it works great instead of a regular scarf.
Beautiful! I tend to wear my shawls that way as well. I have one of Kirstin’s patterns in the queue as well, but I really need to finish one of the other 3 shawl things I’m already working on.
Love them both! Red Rock Canyon turned out beautifully with the three colors. I can’t imagine it any other way.
The best part of the Mystery Shawl was knitting with friends just like we did in the good old blog days. xox
They are both gorgeous!
Both shawls are beautiful but I’m especially partial to the Mystery One since we all did that together.
I agree with Carole above–I love how the colors look together on the first shawl, but I think the second shawl is stunning. (Doesn’t hurt that that’s one of my favorite colors) and I love the delicacy of the edging.
The shawl is really gorgeous! but…who will wear it? I don’t ever see women of any age with a shawl ,no matter how beautifully it’s made. Scarves, cowls (winter) are what I see. It seems wasteful.
Lovely finishes. That blue ombré yarn is gorgeous!! I have been working on the red rock canyon shawl myself but fell behind at some point and haven’t yet caught up. Maybe next month!
Lily, if Cara won’t wear that shawl, I definitely WILL!!! and I’m not picky – either one, or both … happily!
Congratulations on your productivity! So impressive and so lovely!
These are beautiful! Your reference to old time knit bloggers reminded me of when I was blogging all the time, and reading and commenting on many, many knit blogs every day. Specifically I remember a time when I really looked forward to seeing your latest pair of STR Jaywalkers.
Sometimes I really miss my knitting blog. 🙂
Or wait, was it Monkeys? Or maybe it was both! 🙂
It definitely takes a bit of trust in the designer to knit a mystery shawl, and it doesn’t always work out, but I’ve not been steered wrong by either Kirsten or Romi. I love so many of their designs!
Your shawls are beautiful, Cara, and I so enjoyed knitting and chatting along with the oldies. 🙂
I’m loving the gradient yarns, although with a new and exciting idea comes the temptation to enlarge the stash…I rather miss the days when one could cruise around the knitbolggers’ webring in an afternoon. Too much to keep up with now.
The shawls are beautiful!
“Irene Adler” was the first lace shawl I ever knit. I knit it just before the Mystery Shawl started, and that’s when I fell in love with Kirsten’s patterns. I started the Mystery Shawl a little late & finished it last week. I love it! I also love the Black Trillium yarn!
Now I’m trying to decide if I want to knit the Mystery Shawl a second time, or if I want to knit another of Kirsten’s shawls.