Ah!
We are so pleased to be able to offer another of these wonderful kits, designed specifically for Mary White's beaded version of her Three Quarter Time Shawl, exclusively created for us at Earth Faire.
Here we offer another gradiance colorways, specially dyed and created by the amazing dyers at The Unique Sheep to work wonderfully with this pattern. Read on for more data....
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Here is how Mary describes the shawl itself:
"Blossoms and leaves waltz together in this crescent shaped shawl featuring the Estonian Blossom Stitch pattern and a pleasing balance of lace with bead accents. Beginning with a provisional cast on and knitted top down, three sets of leaf clusters with beaded tips are introduced to the first spray of blossoms. As the dance continues, side, center and overall increases and decreases lead on the right side followed with a purl return row, providing both excellent drape and radial symmetry. Repeating sets of beaded leaves and triple blossoms enhance the outer edge on the full style shawl for which the pattern was written."
Plus!
Mary added beads, size 8/0 to the design, using the crochet hook method. The result is amazingly lovely.
We had been offering a wonderful kit for this beautiful shawl in the Fall of 2011 using as the base yarn Eos, from The Unique Sheep, a soft lace weight 50/50 blend of silk and wool. Then Kelly emailed me and suggested that we might like to try out Ling, also a lace weight but with a different blend (70% superwash merino and 30% cultivated silk) where the cultivated silk adds that marvelous sheen that silk can give to a piece. It is slightly thinner than the Eos (less fuzzy) and a crisper overall look. It feels amazing. Well, Cindersall, the fantabulous moderator of our Ravelry group just happened to have some Ling in her stash, dyed in this Snow Glint and crystal beads to add as well. And what she made is what you see in the main photo to the right here.
What we are offering on this web page is somewhat different and requires your imagination a bit. We asked Kelly and Laura to take three close skeins of some of the exclusive gradiance colorways to make a special set of three skeins, designed to create a really lovely garment. The additional shawl photos to the right show how another gradiance blended to make an amazing finished shawl -- now picture these colorways instead, with the added glow that Ling has.
Using the exact amounts of yarn which Mary knew would work and create a beautiful end product, Laura dyed colorways in Ling composed of three special skeinettes. The first skein (for the beginning part) uses only 100 yards. Then the next part of the gradiance continues with 325 yards and the third offers 475 yards. That way the shawl has a proper balance of colors -- take a look at Mary's finished piece. Stunning, yes?
Dragon Scales takes reds and golds and plays with them in such a marvelous vibrant way, going from slightly orange at one end to a deeper and truer red at the larger skein.
I love how beads of gold work with the Dragon Scales and those are the ones which will be included, perhaps Silver Lined Gold AB or Silver Lined Dark Gold or whatever strikes my fancy when I have the yarn and your order in front of me. If you have another idea in mind, pass it on via the "Comments" section -- otherwise let me play with the colors and select for you.
So to sum up: in this kit you will get this great modified pattern, the beautiful Ling in your choice of colorways, totaling 900 yards, and a container of beads to work with the yarn.
You will need to have a very thin crochet hook to add the beads with (available elsewhere on our website) and the needles for the actual knitting (Mary used use 5 US (3.75mm).
These kits will make the small or the medium sizes but be aware that as Ling is somewhat thinner, Cindersall noted that her "medium" ended up as about the same finished measurements as the original pattern's "small".
The Medium size, per the pattern, has a 56" Wingspan, 28" Depth after blocking and relaxed and the Small size has a Wingspan 45" and 25" Depth after blocking and relaxed.
What a beautiful shawl!