A whole lot of rainbows of cotton

So I've just finished making my eighth consecutive shawl using aran weight cotton yarn, one that I over-dyed Burlesque Red and then seven of the wavy lace wraps so you would think that I would have used up quite a bit of yarn.  I probably have to be honest but it just doesn't look like I have.  I had hoped that this pile would have been a lot smaller by now but I guess my expectations hasn't met the reality of it.  I feel like I do with a yarn Pacman right now, eat some this would ya?  Nom, nom, nom, nom.

This photo isn't even all of the aran weight cotton yarn.  I have 15 balls of black, 15 balls of white and 15 balls of bright yellow all waiting on the side-lines to be used as main colours in large rainbow themed or similar colour projects.  All of these are 50g balls originally, some are part balls now though too.

Design A193 - Olive greens or Oliver's Army...

My final colour combination that I have sorted out to make these shawls with is olive/khaki green.  Can't wait to be done with these now, getting a little bored, want to make something else, have ideas, hmmm, will they work though?

And that's a wrap, quite literally!

Design A1932 - purple stripes

I really enjoyed making the last shawl, let's hope this one goes the same way, it is shades of purple after all.  Lovely!  I am getting through some of my stash of cotton yarns but nearly as much as I had hoped that I would.  Lot's of leftovers, I will take a photo once I have finished this and the next one but I already have ideas of how I'm going to go forward with it as I really don't want to make anymore of this particular design after the next one.

Design A193 - the sunset

I kept looking at the range of colours of aran cotton that I'd got and couldn't get away from a particular thought so I decided to go ahead and try it.  That thought is that a certain group of colours reminded me of a sunset when in the right order.

When my 15 year old saw me making this one they started singing the opening lines from The Lion King, which they learned when they were in Yr6 as that was the end of year performance they were part of when they left primary school, and followed it up with "that looks like a sunset".  Bingo, the exact reaction I was hoping for.

Reminds me of a cross-stitch picture I done years ago...

One day I will get this framed, along with all the others that still need to be framed.

Design A193 - Red wine to white

No rest for the wicked, on to the next of crochet shawls.  Aran weight cotton again, in shades red wine, rose and white.  They're pretty quick to make but can become boring, if like me you make one after the other, after the other.  I've not got a lot to say about it other than that you work from the bottom up and then the last thing you do is go around the entire edge and create the shells across the top and add definition to the points along the bottom.

Design A193 - Bottle to cream

I'm made another one of these wavy crochet shawls.  I like this one a lot more than the last one.  Sometimes you think "yeah, that could work" and then afterwards you're not so sure, but everyone has different tastes and I try to cater for that.

The next one is bottle green, light mint and cream aran weight cotton.

I'm definitely happier and more proud of this one.

Design A193 - blue-greens

My second crochet shawl in this design will be using up some of the blue-greens that I have.  These shawls are quite quick to make and produces something that I think looks pretty and functional.  Again, different brands of aran weight cotton.

This one isn't my favourite now that its finished but I'm sure someone will love it.

Design A193 - Coffee Cream

It's been about 4 years since I made one of these, apparently, doesn't seem that long ago but we have just gone through the time zapping, mind numbing Worldwide Covid-19 Pandemic that just took 2 years of our lives away.  I still feel like a zombie!

I am continuing on with my plan of using up some of the thicker yarns and I've picked on a few big bags of aran weight cotton yarn that I have.  I seem to have a lot of this and I vaguely remember buying it because a potential customer had commented that she would most likely have bought from me if I had more things made of cotton.  So I am rectifying that issue and was happy to buy cotton as I can't spin it and it's a natural plant fibre and a renewable resource.

I have put together a number of project bags to make this shawl in several colourways.  Let's begin with the brown range of colours...

Yet another new design - A360 in pure cotton

I'm getting back into making new things again and this time yet another new design for the shop.  Its a comfort style shawl, roughly three-quarters circular so the edges don't actually meet at the front but the shaping makes it hug your neck and the increasing makes it sit on your shoulders and then it just gets more full from thereon down.  I've had the pattern for some time but I have so many it will take years to get to some of them.  This one was published in 2009 by a well-known American yarn company, again with the freedom to sell what you make using their patterns, as long as you are not going to make thousands of them, obviously and the pattern instructions themselves are copyrighted to them so can't be shared, photocopied, distributed, blah, blah, blah the standard legal blurb.

I've had this one in my queue of projects for a while now and I am using some cotton yarn that I picked up second-hand off Ebay sometime ago.  The lady selling it didn't enjoy working with it, it didn't work up as she hoped and so she had "frogged" what she had started making and put it up for sale.  To frog means to rip it back/undo it and is referred to as frogging in the knitting/crocheting community because the vocal sound of "rip it" sounds like a frog.  There are other dictionary meanings of "frog" or "to frog" but those don't apply here.

Ah, I don't have a photo of the actual yarn from my stash so here is one I pulled from the internet of what it would have originally looked like.  It is Garnstudio Drops Paris in shade Apricot and is 100% Cotton aran weight yarn.  Not all of the yarn I bought has yarn labels, a couple missing, that's OK as she had started using it, it's one of those things as not everyone keeps the labels until they've finished making something.  In natural daylight all of the yarn looks the same, no obvious differences in shade or anything so we're good to go.

I make a good start on the crochet and it takes me a couple of days to get to finish line.  A nice pattern, soft cotton yarn, very happy and I've even got some leftovers that I can use on another project or two, depending on what I make.  And then I throw it out open on the floor to take some pictures before I wash and block it.  My happy heart sank like a tonne of lead.  Oh dear, ermmmmm, let's just wash it and see what happens, maybe any excess dye might leak out and then it might look more even in colour.  

No, that didn't happen, that was just wishful thinking.  What did happen though, after quite a while of putting it off and procrastinating for over 6 months, was that it went into the dye pot in September 2022 with some dye that I bought in specifically for plant-based fibres, my usual dyes aren't suitable for plant-based, and I changed it's colour.

Do you see it? I've marked it on the close-up photo.  It was more in-your-face in real life that what the photo suggests.

Burlesque Red, sounds a little risqué and certain glamourous images spring to mind, think along the lines of Dita Von Teese... apparently this particular shade of Dylon dye has since been renamed as "Plum" and no longer features a feather - boring! What's wrong with being a little risqué every now and then.  I love the film Burlesque that stars Cher, Christina Aguilera, Stanley Tucci, Cam Gigandet (James from Twilight) and many others.  Brilliant film, if you've not seen it and like films where the girl down on her luck finally fulfils her dreams then it might just be worth the 2 hours it plays for.

Anyway, its a cold water dye, so other than warm water to start with I didn't have to keep it on the heat or anything and I kept checking on it to make sure it was taking, yes, but I could see a few patches where the dye hadn't been taken properly or at all in a couple of places so I moved it around in the pot and made sure to get as much dye into a much of the fibre as I could.  Its turned out ever so slightly patchy where some little areas are slightly lighter than rest but I think it looks good and I actually love this shade of red, obviously the original start colour of the yarn has had an affect on the final shade and tone but there is no longer any obvious stripe across it.

I will be making this pattern again in the future, I have a couple of yarns in mind for this that I have in my stash.  I just need to find the time to make them, which might not be until early 2023.