Lace Wedding Shawls: Part 2 - Semi-circular

I love knitting lace shawls, they provide a challenge of concentration, take many many hours of work, can be adorned with beads or not but do require the finished crumpled lace to be carefully soaked and then blocked to smooth and define the stitches, which is a major task in itself, and left to dry but the end result is absolutely stunning.

There are thousands upon thousands of patterns available for lace shawls, coming from various parts of the world.  Many are very similar to each other with only very slight differences, whilst others are quite unusual.  They also come in different shapes and sizes to suit the individual needs of the wearer and to compliment different shapes or design features of the wearers wedding dress, ball gown or other outfit.

In the UK, lace shawls are rarely worn whilst in the US and other countries they seem to be quite popular.  This could be due to the climate but lace shawls are surprisingly warm considering how thin they are and I am on a mission to promote lace shawls to brides here in the UK.

This week I have chosen to feature shawls that are triangular in shape and with the aid of some lovely talented ladies on Ravelry I can show you some of the designs available and how they can be worn with wedding dresses.

All photos are protected by copyright and this is noted under each photograph.

Clarabeasty says "A piece of lace doesn’t have to be part of the ‘big outfit’, it can just be a bit of fancy to toss over your shoulders while you’re running through the chill, rain, or snow from the church to the car or to wear in the cooler evening. That’s about the only thing I have to say about lace and brides"

(c) rooknits

(c) rooknits

Rooknits, AKA Ruth from Wolverhampton, UK made this herself from the pattern for the Aeolian Shawl designed by Elizabeth Freeman.










Ruth made it using a laceweight Silk/Merino blend yarn and she added some sparkly multi-faceted beads by Gutterman to the edging.

(c) befriendmantic

Befriendmantic, AKA Bridgit from New York, made this herself using the pattern for the Citron Shawl designed by Hilary Smith Callis. 

(c) http://www.photopinknyc.com/

Bridgit used a laceweight 100% Cashmere yarn and added rows of pearl beads to her shawl and the edging. Second photo is a section taken from the original by Photo Pink

(c) clarabeasty

Clarabeasty, AKA Vicki from Ottawa, Canada made the Gail aka Nightsongs shawl for her friend Liz, who had specific ideas about her shawl. Liz wanted a shawl in fall/autumn colours and chose this particular pattern as it reminded her of leaves. Vicki knitted this using a handpainted laceweight 100% Alpaca yarn.

(c) clarabeasty

(c) http://www.hrmphotography.com/

(c) http://www.hrmphotography.com/

MissScarlet, AKA Adriana from Toronto, Canada knit shawls for herself, her mother, her mother-in-law and her maid of honour.










Adriana's shawl was the petite Aphrodite designed by Silvia Harding made with a 55% Silk/45% Cashmere laceweight yarn and some very pretty beads.

(c) http://www.hrmphotography.com/

Her Maid of Honour wore a lemon coloured version of the Citron Shawl designed by Hilary Smith Callis made with a Merino/Silk blend yarn. Photos are copyright of HRM Photography

jriede, AKA Julia from Weinviertel, Austria knitted herself the fabulous Irtfa'a Faroese Lace Shawl designed by Anne Hanson using a 70% Mohair/30% Silk laceweight yarn and finished it the day before her wedding.

(c) jreide

Teeswater x Shetland Fleece

This is another fleece that is a cross-breed, this time its a Teeswater crossed with a Shetland.  An interesting fleece as you have the long wavy lustrous locks of the Teeswater combined with the shorter, softer, highly crimped locks of the Shetland.  This came from a farm close to Yeovil in Somerset in July 2012.

It arrived weighing 1.8kg and after a quick sort and washing weighed 1.45kg.

The next job was to turn this beautiful fleece into spinnable fibre using my wool combs.  That was a big job but I thoroughly enjoyed it as its a beautiful fleece to work with.  Yeah, that's me holding my big bag of hand combed top just after I had finished combing the last of the fleece.  It took me about 3 weeks to comb my way through the entire fleece, starting on 19th January and finishing on 11th February but I didn't work solely on this, I had other things to do as well.  I got 955g of hand combed nests to spin, which is about 66% yield from this fleece.

I started spinning on 12th February and this was an absolute joy to spin.  It took me a full 7 days to spin the three skeins shown in the photo below, which has beautiful lustre, just look at that shine and that's not flash white-out as I took the photo without the flash being on.  The skeins are in need of their final bath though.

I finished spinning this fleece on 5th March and I got 9 skeins of yarn from this fleece, totalling 912g after their final baths which washed out any remaining dirt and lanolin.  Here is just one of those skeins in close up.

This will make a beautiful bridal shawl one day.

Quilting Stitch Shawl - Design F310

I just had to make one of these fabulous eye-catching shawls.  Technically its not lace but there are eyelet lace stitches in the main body of the shawl and that is good enough for me.  Worked bottom up using two contrasting yarns and adding beads at the intersections of the quilt stitch section.  The yarn I used is Sirdar Denim Tweed Double Knitting in shades 501 (dark colour) and 623 (light colour), which is 60% acrylic, 25% cotton, 15% wool and I also used 312 size 6 glass beads in a rainbow raspberry colour.  I don't know what brand these beads are but they are not Toho.

I started knitting the ruffle at the bottom on 26th January and that was a boring laborious knit I can tell you.  It felt like it was never going to end as it took me two days just to knit that and a further 2 days to knit the two-colour beaded section.  Apologies for my ugly face being in the pictures, I took them late at night using the camera on my laptop.  The beaded quilted stitch section was quite puckered up/egg box looking during the knitting.

I finished knitting this on 3rd February, soaked and blocked it which really defined the beaded quilt stitch section.  I love the contrast in this design, so different to anything else.

Blue Saturn Mohair Shawl - Design A2

I knew it wouldn't be long until I am back using more of the Colinette Yarns that I have in my yarn stash.  This time I have chosen a bright blue Mohair yarn in shade Blue Saturn and it is an Aran weight yarn in 78% Mohair, 13% Wool and 9% Nylon.

I chose a simplistic pattern due to the fuzziness of the Mohair and this pattern is adaptable to the amount of yarn that you have.  I cast on on 13th January and you work the basic pattern from the top down and then you decide how many rows of eyelet lace you want to work and if you want to split it up into sections of eyelet lace and plain and how many rows of each.  This way you can use up all of your yarn and make a bigger shawl or just work the minimum if you have a partial skein, its up to you.

It appeared slightly out of shape when it came off the needles on 14th January 2015 but as always a soak and block has rectified that.   A simple, quick yet elegant shawl to make.

Hillcrescent Farm Jacob Fleece No.4, Part I

This is yet another of the Jacob fleece that I bought from Hillcrescent Farm back in June 2013.  This time I selected Fleece No.4.

This was sheared on 26th May 2013, had not been skirted and had a good amount of surface VM.  After I skirted it it weighs 1.4kg, photos were taken after skirting had taken place.  I think this is from the sheep on the right in the photo.

I separated the colours as best as I could into black/brown, white and a mixture of the colours.  I washed and dried the colours separately and was left with 823g of clean fleece, a loss of around 577g of dirt and grease, broken down as follows: 364g black/brown, 247g white and 212g mixed colour.

The White Fleece

I took the 247g of white fleece and combed it, removing all the short bits and rubbish leaving me with 110g of hand combed nests.  I totally forgot to take any work in progress photos of this, what am I like?  Anyway, wanting to make a "negative" version of Remember, Remember the 5th of November yarn that I made from Hillcrescent Jacob Fleece No.5, I decided to spin this in the same way but instead of using Black Jacob, I used White Jacob.  In total, with the addition of the colourful wool, I have 149g/241m and I call this "Gunpowder, Treason and Plot".

I will blog about the black and the mixed colours from this fleece when I get around to working on them.

Raspberry Chocolate BFL

I bought some ready prepared, pre-dyed BlueFaced Leicester tops from Sara's Texture Crafts in shade Raspberry Choc.  I split each one into long strips and spun them separately.  I plied them to make a Fingering Weight yarn, 206g/900m total.  In the future I may have a go at preparing BFL from raw fleece, who knows!

And a glamour shot, which actually shows the true colour.  I have two of these skeins.

Hillcrescent Farm Jacob Fleece No.6

I really want to finish working through all of the Jacob fleece that I bought from Hillcrescent Farm back in June 2013 before I start working on some Jacob fleece that I had from another farm, 19 miles away in Elford, Staffordshire, courtesy of an old friend.  By old friend, I mean she's not old, we're the same age, but I've known her almost half of my life.  This time I selected Fleece No.6.

This was sheared on 26th May 2013, had not been skirted and had a good amount of surface VM.  It was very small and after I skirted it it weighs 790g, photos were taken after skirting had taken place.  I think this is from the sheep 2nd from the left in the photo.

I separated the colours as best as I could into black/brown, and a mixture of the colours.  There wasn't enough white to make it feasible to keep it separate.  I washed and dried the colours separately and was left with 444g of clean fleece, a loss of 346g of dirt and grease, broken down as follows: 312g black/brown and 132g mixed colour.

The Mixed Colours Fleece

I took the 132g of mixed colour fleece and combed it, removing all the short bits and rubbish leaving me with 66g of hand combed nests.  I noticed that some of them were very pale and some very dark so I took these and blended together to make a more evenly coloured yarn.  I lost a further 10g in the process, leaving me with just 56g to spin, a yield of just 42.4%, which I spun into a sport weight yarn of 55g/255m.

The Black Fleece

I combed the 312g of black fleece down to 137g of hand-combed top, a yield of 43.9%.  I plied the singles together to make a double knit weight 2ply yarn which is 129g/422m.  There was a lot of rubbish in this fleece, see the pile of waste in the first photo!  For those who can add up, I lost the missing 8g during the after spinning washing process when the last of the dirt and lanolin washed out.

So that is all of the fleece used up to make these fabulous skeins of yarn.