Design A193 - Olive greens

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...

Design SB188 in natural black Jacob wool

One more shawl of this design before I move onto something else.  This time I have chosen some natural black Jacob wool that I spun 4 years ago.  The fleece for it was sourced locally and you can read more about that here.  

This time, when I finished the shawl I had a lot of yarn remaining and so instead of finishing and then making a brooch, I lay it to one side, made the brooch and then came back to the shawl and added extra rows of pattern to the bottom edge so as to be able to use up all of this lovely handspun yarn.  This means that this shawl is slightly longer than the ones made in acrylic yarn.  Also, because this shawl is made from pure wool which has been processed carefully by hand for spinning and then spun by me it does mean that this shawl will be a lot more expensive than those made from acrylic yarn as there is an element of labour charges involved, as well as the price of the buying the fleece.

I use long strong cable ties to help form scallops when I am blocking any shawl that has a scalloped bottom edge.  Obviously I still need to use pins to keep it in shape and place but the cable ties mean I can use less pins and help create a smoother line.

Design SB188 in White Acrylic

My final shawl using the acrylic yarn I bought recently is the same again but this time in white.   This design works up quickly and I think is quite pretty.

The colour is off in the photo on the right hand side, its October and good natural light can be hard to find most days.  Artificial light can add all sorts of tones to photos.

Its really pretty in white, very bridal.

Design SB188 in Sea Green Acrylic

I love turquoise, aqua, teal, sea green kind of colours, which is in part why I chose this colour yarn when I was shopping online recently.

Again, this one has a matching brooch that you can use as a fastening or you can attach to a bag or other accessory if you choose.

SB188 in Black Acrylic

Following on from making this design in bright yellow I have now made one in black.

I took the next two photos using my phone and I don't know why but it seems to have put a reddish tinge right in the centre of the photos (the photo on the right is zoomed in and only shows part of the original photo).  My old phone used to do the same and this is the first time that I've noticed this new phone doing that as well now. 😡

As you can see from these final photos taken with my Canon camera, it is a proper black.  Once again I made a flower brooch in the same yarn that can be used to fasten the shawl however you want to, doesn't have to join the edges together, you could bring it together higher up and have it just down from your shoulder or you could fix the brooch to a bag.  Wear it as you want.

Design SB188 in Mustard Yellow

I recently sold one of these designs in blue cotton, but the customer had previously asked if I could make it in black and so I searched to see what appropriate yarns were available but the customer went with the blue anyway.  I discovered that higher quality yarns in this thickness have sky rocketed in price since I made the blue one and would probably double the price of the finished item but I did find some acrylic yarn of the right thickness at a good price and so I bought some in 4 different colours with the purpose of making some more of this design.

These work up really quick and I made a giant flower brooch with the left-overs.

Grey Cotton Wrap - Design A193

I'm on a roll with these wraps and this one looks really classy, I think its the colours.  I don't have any nice photos of this one yet, only the work-in-progress photos, but I will update this when I get round to taking the nice photos.

Blue Cotton Wrap - Design A193

On with the next of these shawls, similar yarn by Garnstudio, I don't really know what the difference is as its the same thickness, same fibre content, feels the same etc.  This time I chose four shades of blue that work well together.

I really like this one but then I am more of a blue-purple-turquoise girl myself anyway.  This one would also work well dressed down and worn casually with jeans I think.  Once again, I didn't take any work-in-progress photos.  What am I like!

Pink Cotton Wrap - Design A193

Following on from the dusky pink wrap we have this brighter pink wrap.  I chose 3 shades of pink from the same cotton yarn as I used last time but this time I didn't take any work-in-progress photos.  Whoops!

I think these work together pretty well.

Enough of the pink now, will choose another colour for the next one.

Dusky Pink Cotton Wrap - Design A193

So I promised I would make more cotton wraps soon as not everyone wants to wear wool, some people want wool free wraps.

I bought quite a few colours in the yarn that I finally managed to source and some of these shawls will be three colours and some will be four colour, depending on what was available.  My original in this design was done in 4 colours.

This time I am using 100% cotton yarn from Garnstudio and this is Drops Paris in three shades of pink.

I didn't take many work-in-progress photos, I just got stuck in and got it made.

I'm not a fan of pink, the colour not the singer, I actually like Pink! the singer, but this one isn't too bad.

My next wrap is another one of these but what colour?

Blue Cotton Wrap - Design SB188

I've received some feedback recently, absolutely glowing feedback, but in that feedback my customer stated that she hopes that I make some more cotton wraps soon.  Well, after a lot of searching I have finally found some cotton yarns here in the UK that are thick enough for the design that she bought from me and also for another wrap that I sold a while back that was also made from cotton yarn.  There seems to be an abundance of choice in the USA but not so much here in the UK and with shipping and import tax it makes it too expensive to import it in from the USA.

The yarn is King Cole Whopper Cotton and the colour is Azure.

It didn't take very long to make this wrap but the problem I have with super chunky yarns like this one is that tires my hands out very quickly and makes them ache a bit.  I do have a touch of Arthritis in my right hand and I normally wear a support glove pretty much 24/7 but I do take it off for certain tasks and working this yarn didn't help.  Maybe I need to work slower or have shorter work time and longer breaks when using super chunky yarns to prevent the strain on my hands.

The above photos show it during the blocking process.  It may look darker in some photos but that is because it's wet.

The photo top right shows how it might look when held together with a shawl pin, which I don't have, and which is why I popped the tip of the shawl through one of the lace holes as an improvise.