By Any Other Name

While I might be quite tardy in blogging about Camp Loopy this summer, I've been pretty timely about getting my projects done.

The first project (the June project, that is) called for something smallish, only 400 yards, that reminds you of a favourite book/movie/tv series.  I scrolled through my Ravelry favourites list for inspiration, and quickly came upon a little shawlette that I've been wanting to make for ages.  It's named Henslowe, after Philip Henslowe, a real theatrical contemporary of Shakespeare, who was portrayed by Geoffrey Rush in one of my all-time favourite films, Shakespeare in Love.

I chose madelinetosh for this project - their fingering weight wool single called Tosh Merino Light - in a colourway they call Cherry, but I see as many shades of fragrant roses.

I went down a needle size to get the specified gauge for the project, but having done so, it seems to have turned out a bit small for my tastes.  It will work well as a scarf but isn't really sufficient for a shawl.  It looks so lovely in this yarn, though (go ahead and click on that photo for a close up and try to deny it) that I am tempted to make another in a different colour, this time with two skeins, and make it both wider and taller in the garter stitch portion before doing the lace edging.  Then again, there are so many things to make, that who ever has time to revisit something a second time?

Galactica

For the first FO of 2014, I have a scarf, but not just any scarf.  This is the sort of scarf that only a crazy person would begin, since it is done in fingering weight yarn on 2.75mm needles.  I also had to learn a new technique (Brioche stitch) to knit it, but once I saw the design up on the Purl Bee, I just had to do it.

The first question, then, was what yarn to use to knit it.  I'm a huge fan of Madelinetosh and when I saw the Spectrum colourway of their Tosh Merino Light, I fell in love.  My skeins are a bit darker than the samples on the website, but there is still an undertone of deep purpley blue with all of the colours of the rainbow within.  I like the way that, at a distance, it appears to be more of a semisolid, but up close it is so complex and beautiful.

Brioche stitch turns out to be pretty simple and also fun to do, which made it easy to dedicate a lot of knitting time to this project.  I also wanted to get it done quickly, to make sure I got some good use out of it this winter (I'm sure that won't be a problem, given the weather lately) so I watched a ton of Battlestar Galactica while I knit row after row, inch after inch, of Brioche.  It seemed like it took forever, but according to the Ravelry page, it was actually only about 35 days.  I guess that just proves how hard it is to be monogamous to any one project.  Thank goodness I have a bunch more to work on, now.

Rock Star

When I posted the lovely photos of my first Camp Loopy project, I mentioned that the second project would be a lace shawl in Madelinetosh.  I bet that even your wildest dreams didn't imagine something this beautiful!

The challenge for the second Camp Loopy project was to knit something with at least 500 yards of yarn, and it had to be a pattern that was so popular that at least 1000 people have posted it on Ravelry.  I went through some of my favourite designs and found a few contenders, but as always Jared Flood stole my heart with one of his designs.  This one is the Rock Island shawl, and ever since the first day I saw it, I knew I needed to make it.

I went through the laceweight yarns on the Loopy Ewe website, and decided that Madelinetosh Prairie would be perfect, in a nice deep grey, and after all, I don't have any grey lace, as of yet.  Then I scrolled down and saw this colour, called Nebula.  The photos of it broke my heart with the dazzling blend of light and dark teals, spun into a spectacular laceweight single.  I immediately changed my order and got the Nebula.  So I still don't have any grey lace.

The construction is unusual: you begin with the edging (71 repeats of it, which take ages) and then pick up the body of the shawl from there.  It's smooth sailing after that, with a simple lace design and then mindless garter stitch.  Once you're in the garter stitch, it's just a matter of watching the rows get shorter and shorter and faster and faster until you are at the finish line.  So satisfying.  A quick soak and then block the Dickens out of it and you're ready for the fanciest event.

You can tell my photographer is more used to people-shots than shawl-shots, but I think you can still appreciate how lovely the finished product is.