Fiber Dreams

As you know, I’ve been fiddling with yarn and stitch pattern books lately. I keep changing my mind. I decided a while back that I wanted to make an beaded ocean-themed stole. I have the perfect little silver-lined beads. They look like perfect little silvery bubbles of air under water when sunlight touches them. So I did some digging, got some help from Anne on a particularly sticky stitch, and found some stitch patterns that I really like.

At the lower edge of this first swatch is a lace shell pattern, topped by a drop-stitch shell pattern, a row of faggoting on either side, and part of a border. I tinkered a lot with the border here. At first I thought I’d put a column of the drop-stitch shells at the inside edge of the border, but I ended up not liking it at all. I dug around in my books some more, and found this delightful wave border pattern that you see at the top and rounding the corner.

At first I didn’t like the way the lower edge is all scalloped, but I decided this morning that I like it a lot. But if I have that as the lower edge, it causes other problems. Like how will I handle the wave border? But if I use the naturally scalloped bot­tom edge, then I save yarn by not knitting waves at the top and bottom of the stole, and that would be good. I have a limited amount of yarn, you see.

Here’s another swatch. I cannibalized several smaller swatches to make it. I hoped to save some yarn that way. I started this swatch with a provisional cast on. My idea here was to prepare for a border to be knit all the way around the finished stole. The motifs are organized sort of the way you’d find things at the shore… The small shells are at the bottom, larger shells next, then some sea foam, and the sun up above. Waves go around the whole thing. The border on the left does not include faggoting, but the one on the top right does. I want to get some faggoting in there somehow, as I really like it.

Is it too busy?

Right now I’m thinking of putting the waves on the sides, the large shells on the bottom as they make such a nice edge, and have sea snakes curling up between them—this is obviously a tropical sea—a bunch of small shells, and the waves just on the sides.

Would that be too boring?

Keep in mind that an actual shawl will be wider and longer, and there will be larger areas of each motif. Also, my thought is to knit two sides and graft them together in the center, so all the suns would be in the center, and the waves and shells would stretch out on either side toward the ends. Does that make sense?

How do people make these decisions to come up with such beautiful finished shawls? What do you think I should do? Hints? Clues? Comments? Suggestions? Can’t promise I’ll implement any of them, but I’ll consider them all.

A different kind of shawl

The latest newsletter from Berroco finally had some­thing interesting in it. Can’t say I’ll ever make this shawl-coat thing, but I do find it… interesting. If you like it, it’s called Panini.

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