Butterflies and baby camels

Yep, this is a post about butterflies and baby camels. The shawl I have recently completed is the butterfly part. It's the Mariposa shawl which means butterflies in Spanish. 

This was a very satisfying shawl to knit. One of the main factors contributing to the pleasure of knitting this shawl was the yarn I used, Dyed By Hand Yarns Camel Train Lace. And this is where the baby camel comes in. The yarn is a 50/50 blend of baby camel and silk. Its a great yarn to knit with. The yarn glides through the hand and doesn't split which is very good because its such a fine yarn. I found the yarn gave good stitch definition and lovely drape. I was also able to give the shawl a hard block.

I knitted the shawl on 3.75 needles and used 61g. I have one more skein of this yarn in my stash and I'm looking forward to knitting with it. Just need to find the right pattern.

Three way shawl

Here is a super easy and very versatile shawl, the Chameleon Shawl.

I've been meaning to knit this shawl for ages but couldn't find the right yarn. I started it once with some Tosh Lace but the colours weren't quite right. Then on a visit to Bendigo Woollen Mills I spied some Luxury 4 ply in Bracken and Wild Barley and knew I had the right combination. The 4 ply meant that the shawl turned out quite large but I don't mind that. Its going to be a great winter shawl.

The worst part of the shawl is the edging. Its not at all difficult but like all edgings it seems to take forever. I needed to put it down every now and then and knit something else just to have a bit of a break.

New beginnings

It's the first day of the new year so I would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year.

I am going to try to be a better blogger this year. I became very slack in the second half of 2012 and soon fell out of the habit of regular blogging.

So I'm going to start with a brief catch up and share a few projects with you which I completed the last couple of months.

First off, I tried my hand at designing my own shawl and Palm Leaf was the result.

The yarn is Bendigo Woollen Mills 2 ply classic hand dyed by EmilytheEnabler and the needle size 3.5mm.

I had a lovely skein of Yarn Pirate Superwash Merino Sock yarn in Brown Sugar which I didn't know what to do with it. So with the help of fellow Ravellers I ended up knitting a Pogona and this was the result.

I participated in a blue swap on Ravelery. For this swap you have to provide your partner with yarn and goodies all in the colour blue. I decided to knit a shawl for my partner and finally had the opportunity to knit a Boo Knits pattern, Dragonfly Wings.

And to finish off I knitted two shawls for another Raveller as part of a different swap. Another lovely Booknits pattern, Heaven Scent

and Be.Leaf by Kitman Figueroa.

Okay, that's enough to start the year. There are more in the pipeline!