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An amazing masterpiece of a shawl, here is Verna Knapp's Soaring Dragons!

With lots of options, this beauty can be made as a circle or as a 3-panel cape, in lace weight or in fingering weight, with one color of bead or as many as five different ones.

Here is how Verna describes this beautiful piece:

Soaring Dragons is a beaded lace pattern. There is a circle version with 5 identical dragons, and a 3 panel “semicircle” version with 3 varied dragons. They burst out from the center, dragons on the wing and roaring fire. Although beads are optional, there are bead counts for the various parts of the pattern to help you use multiple colors of beads, different ones for the flame, the wings, the body, the eyes, and the center swirl.

Whew!

Well, we have to winnow a bit in order to offer kits and so here is what we are going to do: For the purposes of this kit, we are offering you a lovely lace weight yarn with your choice of one of four of the fantastic exclusive Gradiance colorways we have set up with The Unique Sheep.

You can also choose enough yarn and beads for the 3-panel version or for the full circular piece. The "basic" price you see on this web page would be for a 3-panel version with all one color of beads (options described below), and getting the pattern via Ravelry. Adding more yarn or a variety of beads or another form of the pattern adds a bit to the cost, as you will see in the drop-down menus.

Important note: this is on a pre-order basis --- that means that your choice is dyed to your specifications and will likely take some weeks to be ready, possibly a month even or thereabouts. So this is not for anyone in a rush.

The Circle shawl requires in Lace weight 1800 yards and the Three Panel in Lace weight needs 1285 yards. We are offering this kit in the delicious new Cirrus yarn, 80% superwash merino/ 20% silk. It feels wonderful. There are roughly 872 yards to each 100 grams, so it is a slightly heavy lace weight. We are figuring on 165 grams for those who would like to make the 3-panel cape (giving lots of "wiggle room" on the yardage) with 5 skeinettes of 33 grams each, and roughly 231 grams for those who would like to make the full circle version (note additional cost in the drop-down menu) with 7 skeinettes of 33 grams.

We are offering four colorways to choose from.

Dragon Fire is a subtle mix of both warm colors and cool colors, ranging from an orange through a red into a red-violet. Very striking. With it we will be including all one colorway of 8/0 beads -- a brilliant gold (on Verna's suggestion) to really pop!

Windy Seas is a gentle play on pale blue teal -- it ranges from a frosty silvery light blue into deeper and deeper blues until a slight addition of green turns the blues into deep teal. (See second photo on this page.) Again with this one we will be including all one colorway of 8/0 bead: A Silver Lined Crystal AB to mirror the foam on the ocean waves.

Verna also mentioned to me that she found that many knitters enjoyed the idea of making the flame in a different color of bead. So for Twilight, a dramatic deep colorway that ranges from deep charcoal into purple into blue, we are offering a Silver Lined Amethyst AB for the majority of the beads with Silver Lined Crystal for the flames.

Blue Dragon can be seen on the top (main) photo on this page, as knit by Verna. She wrote to me that she used red beads for the eyes and orange for the flames, silver for the whirlpool in the center, and the beads for the body a bit darker than the wings, in blue shades. Unless you tell me differently, that is basically what we will be including in either size kit in Blue Dragon.

We do not have photos of finished pieces in all of these colorways. The first and third photo on this page shows Blue Dragon, in a circular shawl. The second photo shows the 3-panel version in Windy Sea. The last few photos are of the beautiful version made my Jossroll of Ravelry. His colorway is not one of the ones we are offering but I love how his photos show the dragons outlined by beads; and the overall look is very similar to how the Dragon Fire will look.

Verna also notes that there are both charts and written instructions. Because the pattern is quite complex, the written instructions have very long lines. Some knitters have found it difficult to keep their place in these lines, and have found the charts much easier to use.

Note that the kit will not automatically include the pattern. I know some knitters prefer to get it directly as a PDF file of the pattern from Verna via her Ravelry web page. If that is how you would like to go, then set the "Pattern" drop-down menu to "No Pattern Needed."

Alternatively, if you would prefer a printed copy, please make sure the "Pattern" drop-down menu is set to that and we'll get that to you in your kit. Be aware though that the pattern is 67 pages (!) long and thus the cost for a printed version has to reflect this.

We also can send the pattern to you via email and if you choose that option, I will send it to you just before shipping out your kit.

So note that there are 3 drop-down menus to set before you check out.

This is going to be truly amazing to knit!