Design LF433 - Pretty in Midnight

I've decided to make another of the Twilley's Goldfingering shawls using yarn from three different era's of the thread, easily distinguished by the way the thread is wound onto the cardboard inner and the oldest of the threads colour codes began with WG. In this case, the oldest thread is the dark blue, followed by the medium blue, and finally the silver.

I began crocheting this on 18th March and finished it on 24th May 2025, just working on it as and when I could, in between doing other things.

I didn't take any work-in-progress photos. This has become a recurring issue for me lately. I used to take lots of pictures of my progress, and now I just don't. There is no specific reason for this change; I just don't remember or think about taking any.

This one is very similar to one I made in early 2019, which is still available in my shop and features pale gold centres, turquoise petals, and midnight blue for the rest of it and also one that I made in 2017 which has silver centres, blue petals and royal blue for the rest of it.

Design LF433 - Pretty in Baby Pink & Purple

I started making this as soon as I finished making the last one, on 25th April 2023.

All of the threads used on this project are taken from one dye lot per colour. I didn't take any work-in-progress photos at all and I have no idea how I forgot to do that, other than the fact that my father-in-law passed away the first week of May and I was busy helping my mother-in-law and husband with all that that entails.

Design LF433 - Pretty in Purple and Cerise

I started making this back in September 2023, using this project as something to work on when I had to sit in a café and while away an hour or so when my youngest first started college and was only in for 2 hours on a Friday morning and it wasn't worth driving home to turn around and come back again.  He was in for longer the rest of the week and also at times when I had to sit and wait at appointments and such.  I don't have to sit and wait now so I've decided to finish making it a bit quicker.

As what often happens on these projects using the vintage Twilley's Goldfingering, specifically with the thread for the flower centres and/or the flower petals, I ended up having to use two different dye lots for the pale gold centres so I made sure to checkerboard them across the entire shawl so that if there is any noticeable difference it then becomes a design feature. If I have to use more than one dye lot for the main colour, I tend to use one for the crochet and the other dye lot for the fringing or a mix of both in the fringing.

Design LF433 - Pretty in Orange and Lime

The day after I finished the last shawl, I started making this one.  Unfortunately, I didn't calculate things correctly, and I ran out of lime green before I was able to make enough flowers.  I put in a lot of effort, searching the internet and trying a couple of alternatives, but there was nothing around that was even close in colour to this particular shade of lime.  That's what happens when you create things using vintage materials.  Twilley's stopped making this thread in all but seven standard colours: white, black, silver, light gold, gold, bright red, and bright green, years ago. The company went out of business entirely in February 2020, after operating for approximately 100 years.

The upshot is that I have made one of my usual shawls, but this one is a little smaller, one entire row of motifs less than normal, and therefore at a lower price point.

Design LF433 - Kingfisher Blue

For my next shawl I have picked one of the project boxes that has been in a cupboard for some time.  I have a small stack of small boxes that contains Twilley's Goldfingering that I have put together to work into shawls.  This one is pale gold, light pink and kingfisher blue.

I've not been taking work in progress photos lately but I did get a couple, one of the project box, one of the flower, one as I was sewing in the ends and some as the sun bounced on my work and I couldn't resist as its really difficult to show off how sparkly these shawls are, to capture the sparkle is almost impossible usually.

This one is similar in colour combination to another shawl that I made but it is different, that one was silver, pink mix and teal.

Design A447 - Autumn Leaves with ecru

For the next one I focused on working on motifs made using the yellows, oranges, reds and brown colours.

Two of the orange shades are very close in colour with the one bottom right being lighter and a different tone.  In terms of how many motifs of each colour I was able to make from the leftovers are as follows, in order from top left to the bottom right:

Brown = 5 motifs, Blood Orange = 11 motifs, Buttercup yellow = 8 motifs

Daffodil yellow = 1 motif, Ecru = main, Cherry red = 14 motifs

Orange = 5 motifs, Vanilla = 11 motifs, Papaya = 9 motifs 

I again positioned the motifs so that they would mirror the left side to the right side with a central strip made up of the what was left.  

I really love the colours in this one.

Design A447 - Pinks, purples and white

I'm carrying on with my mission to use up as much of the Aran weight cotton yarn as I possibly can and this is the best time of year to do it because it's cooler weather and heading into even cooler weather.

I've picked another vintage pattern, this time it was published in the USA in 1976.  The photos in the book are not the best but it does look like it could be visually stunning.  I started to follow the instructions but I was finding it awkward to get "inch length loops" or for what I was able to do to look equal and neat and I didn't like the massive "hole" in the middle of what would be a flower.  I decided to start with a magic loop for a smaller "hole" and instead of having a number of long loops of yarn which formed the petals of the flowers I changed these to clusters of double crochet (US)/triple crochet (UK), which meant working 5 of those stitches up to, but not completing the last pull through, and keeping them on the hook until all 5 were done and then just pull through all 5 loops on the hook to make the cluster.

To get them all to be equal in size, I popped the non-working end of the crochet hook into the hole and pulled up against that and secured the ends.  I guess a biro pen or something similar would also do that job.

I had no solid colour plan when I first started, but I knew that I would not be following the colour plan of the pattern, which is rows of colours that form the V's of the triangular shape.  I did know that the main colours would be white, ecru or black as I have large amounts in each of those colours, and just to make as many flowers as possible from each colour that I have left in my stash and see how things go based on how many flowers I get from the left overs.

Because I am using different yarn to the original pattern and the fact that I have altered how the pattern is worked my motifs are coming out a tad smaller than the measurements on the pattern so having done some figuring out I need to work enough motifs to have 15 of them across the shoulders, not the original 13, and this then works to the original measurements of 60 inches across the shoulders.  It does, however, mean that I need to make 64 motifs as opposed to 49.

I've decided that the first one will be a random mix of pinks and purples with the main colour being white and so I focused on working just those colours for a while.

In terms of how many motifs of each colour I was able to make from the leftovers and how many I made from the slightly larger amounts are as follows, in order from top left to the bottom right: 

white = main colour, light purple = 4 motifs, powder pink = 1 motif, medium pink = 3 motifs 

light old pink = 3 motifs, heather = 8 motifs, dark purple = 9 motifs, medium purple = 2 motifs 

red wine = 1 motif, candyfloss pink = 11 motifs, cherry = 11 motifs, rose = 11 motifs

Two of the pinks and the two reds are very similar in colour but are slightly different.  I laid the motifs out in the shape of the pattern in a random order and then spent a long time playing about moving them around so that not only were two of the same colour not next to each other but also so that the colours were as evenly spread out as I could get them because at point I had all the dark purples loitering together on the left and the reds were all huddled up together too and that just won't do so I made sure they were as mixed as I could get them.

At the point in the photo above, where the motifs have one row of he main colour around them and are joined together I only had 38g left to do the small motifs that fit in the spaces and the fringing. This was not enough so I had to order more of the white yarn because although I started with 200g my yarn has slightly fewer metres per 50g than the original pattern yarn plus the fact that I have made a mine bigger. 

When the yarn arrived and I started to make the little motifs I wasn't happy, they looked messy so once again I had to figure out a better way to work them so that they are neater and more even whilst keeping the original style of the pattern. 

I also increased the fringing lengths from 10inch to 15inch, looped through, pulled each one tight and trimmed the lengths straight. 

I think the finished shawl is very visually stunning and I will be making many more of these in an array of colours.

Design LF433 - Pretty in Red (or the Ladybird shawl)

I started making this back in January and then I must have put it to one side after completing the flowers for some reason before picking it up again last week and joining them all together with the main colour. 

I have used Twilley's Goldfingering in shades WG4/004 light gold, WG31/031 black and a couple of different dye lots of WG38/038 red.

I didn't make any notes nor did I seem to take any work-in-progress photos other than a couple where I am preparing to add the fringing.  My eldest daughter said that I had made the sofa look like a Christmas candy cane.  I did run out of space and so I used the back of a couple of cushions on the floor.  The reason I laid them out like this was because whilst I was able to use one dye lot for the shawl I had to use a couple of different dye lots of red when I got to the fringing part and so I cut the lengths and divided them across the number of tassels and then the other dye lots were cut and added in equal amounts to each tassel.  This means that all of the tassels are made from mixed dye lots but it won't be obvious because they all contain mixed dye lots.

I think the final shawl looks a bit like a ladybird.

Design LF433 - Pretty in Purple

I've been working on this one a little at a time, when I can fit a bit of time in to work on it, like that time between getting home from the school run and having to start cooking the evening meal.  I've recently learned that Thomas B Ramsden, the parent company that owns yarn brands such as Twilleys, Robin, Wendy and a couple of others, went into Administration in April of 2020.  This could be a financial and legal reaction to Covid-19, to protect the company from outstanding financial burdens in the short term whilst they are unable to continue business due to Covid-19 or it could be that they are genuinely struggling and are having to close the business after over 100 years.

This one is similar too another one that I have in my shop that has light purple main colour and dark petals, but I have used slightly different purple shades in this one.

Design LF433 in Pink and Green

I started this way back on 4th March and just been doing a bit of work on this when I can and when I feel like it.  Covid-19 Lockdown is taking its toll on my crafting as everyone has been at home.  I don't have any issues with supplies, I have enough to last me for decades if need be, my issue is with a lack of motivation.

My colours for this one are Gold, Cerise and Pale Green Twilley's Goldfingering.

First up are a couple of work in progress photos.

And now for a couple of finished item photos.

Pretty in Navy - Design LF433

So, I pretty much left this at the beginning of December after making a start on it but I did manage to complete all the flower petals before I picked it up again in earnest on 5th February.  When I did come back to it the first thing I had to do was sew all the ends in from doing the petals.  That is one of the worst jobs when making a shawl like this, all the yarn ends, never ending yarn ends.

Finished and waiting for a soak and block.

I finished this but didn't get round to taking proper photos for several months, certainly not until after I had purchased new backdrops in the summer of 2019 so I've popped back to add the photos rather than create a new blog post just to do that.

I've started another of my favourite vintage shawls - LF433

I've started making another one, I love them, people looking at my shop don't seem to take a look at them though, maybe its the rubbish photos.  One day I will be able to do something about that, I'm sure I will.

Anyway, light gold, turquoise and midnight blue.  I'm having to use a different brand of vintage thread for the petals this time but they are almost identical threads, same thickness, same length, same fibre content and probably made at the same factory with just different labels added to them for the different companies that sell them.

I have made a start, I have all the centres done and started on the flowers but I have to leave this for a little while as I have a custom order coming in and loads to do before Christmas so this will be finished in the New Year.  Sorry for the rubbish photo below, my phone is not the best for taking photos.

Teal and Pink - Design LF433

I've made another of one of my favourite vintage patterns using the same vintage thread and this time I'm using silver for the flower centres, pink multi for the petals and teal for the main body.

Unfortunately I ran out of the pale pink multi with one full flower and half flowers to go.  I searched Ravelry for other people with this thread, only two people had it and I messaged both of them. Luckily one of them was a really lovely lady who only had a small amount left but she sent it to me anyway and refused to take any money for it.  Almost there, just three half flowers to complete and I ran out again.  I still hadn't heard from the other lady, never did get a response so I had to improvise.  Taking a plain pale pink of the same vintage thread I combined it with some blue and gold metallic sewing thread I had and made something very similar, similar enough that once finished with the main colour separating the flowers you have to look hard to see the difference.

In the photo of the three half flowers above, the top left is the one that I made up using the vintage thread and some metallic sewing thread and the other two, can't remember which is which, but they are made from the vintage thread I had and the vintage thread that the lady gave me, obviously from different dye lots but not massively different.

What a difference blocking makes to a piece of crochet.

And the final piece in all its glory.

Vintage Daisy Shawl - Design D428

I recently made 3/4 of a shawl when I realised that I didn't have enough yarn to finish it and it wouldn't have looked right if I had made it shorter than the pattern.  I also realised that it didn't have enough drape either, it was too stiff for this design and that was down to gauge.

I undone the entire thing, about 2 weeks work, and found another design to use the yarn with.  I had a few issues with this design as there aren't any photos that show how the motifs are joined together or what the finished shawl looks like other than the one photo on the vintage pattern that just shows it from the front and draped over the arms of the model.

Each motif consists of 6 rounds of crochet, with the 6th round being the one where you join to other motifs, and then you have to crochet round the whole thing once finished to make the nice edging.

Made from some of my own hand spun Polwarth wool that I spun back in 2012.

Before and after fringe being added.

Its been blocked and is modelled by my teenage daughter.  It reminds me of a giant dreamcatcher and I think its beautiful.