A truly lovely yarn to go with this most unique shawl!
This new shawl by Liz of Apple Tree Knits gives you flowers and gives you beads in a beautiful mix -- a wonderful song of summer.
Here is what Liz wrote:
Enjoy your very own Hibiscus Garden, any time of year! This fun, summery shawl features big beautiful hibiscus flowers worked in lace, and highlighted by glittering stamens worked in beads.
Worked from the bottom-up and shaped with short-rows, the crescent shape of this pattern stays put however you choose to wear it. The small shawlette size is perfect for keeping off a cool summer breeze, while the large shawl size works equally well as a casual summer wrap or wrapped as a scarf while you wait for summer to return!
Liz did the pattern in written and charted form for lace, and all directions are written out so you have a total choice. It requires standard lace increases and decreases, some beading, and short-rows for shaping; the lace pattern does contain “rest rows” (rows of all purl).
The pattern allows you to make two sizes of this shawl, needing 400 yds/365 m (650 yds/595 m) lace-weight yarn. The original ones you see here were knit in Apple Tree Knits Stellar Lace in Azalea, 70% superwash merino/30% silk, 2-ply, 1085 yds (992 m)/3.5 oz(100g).
What we offer for this kit is from Fiddlesticks Knitting -- their absolutely lovely lace weight yarn, called appropriately enough Exquisite.
It has a truly elegant drape and sheen.
The fibers are 50% merino wool / 50% mulberry silk and each ball is 50 grams = 500 meters, or about 550 yards.
So for the smaller size, all you need is one ball -- and what we have here is the very beautiful Peony colorway, a deep, rich, rosy magenta. Striking and delightful, this is a true solid color and I love it.
We offer this kit with the hard copy of the pattern plus one skein of the yarn (as pictured in the inset photo to the upper right of the first picture on this page and then right below it again). If you would rather make the larger size and would like two, just email me to check for availability. I'd be very glad to set you up with the larger kit if it appeals.
You will also need 6/0 beads: 24(48) of the main color (MC), and 60(120) contrast color (CC). They form lovely little stamens in the flowers -- with a deeper color for the stems of the stamens and a lighter one for the pollen bearing fruits on top. I am not sure that accuracy is necessarily the way to go -- sometimes Mother Nature puts together colors that we'd consider a bit garish. I think the more important thing is to have beads that don't look "wrong" but don't clash either. Liz suggests beads matching the yarn color for the MC and CC being a contrast color. Let me choose for you -- I have lots of colors here, sometimes not enough to put up on the website but certainly enough for this kit and it can be fun to play with possibilities. Though if you have certainty on what color beads you want, tell me by all means.
Not included in the kit but needed is a very thin crochet hook or dental floss for placing the beads.
The finished size for this smaller one will be 40 in/102 cm wide at widest point, by 15 in/38 cm deep at deepest point.
This will make for an amazingly delicious shawl -- really marvelous.
