Knitting, spinning, dyeing
            and all things fiber!

I found some very fine and beautiful variegated mohair in my stash, so decided I needed another shawl! A VERY colorful shawl.
The pattern is from Martha Waterman's book, Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls. 

Of course, I needed something to carry along with this cob-webby mohair, so back to the stash I went. 

Grabbed some scarlet coned pearl cotton, and loved the drape of the two together, but decided that the beauty of the mohair was lost, overpowered by the cotton.  Then I found some finer burgundy cotton to carry with the mohair (top of swatch) but then it wasn't drapey enough…….. Hmmmm

Well, by then I had exhausted the yarn stash possibilities, so I began thinking about dyeing something……



Until I spied some beautiful roving from Grafton Fibers with a very similar colorway to the mohair.  And here's how it spun up:

The shawl is drapey, soft and warm.

The Flower Basket Shawl - pattern from IK Fall 2005 (I think).  This started out as a commercial not-very-pretty off white alpaca yarn.  After some swatching, into the dyepot it went!

I added a few repeats of the main pattern to make the shawl larger.  I liked the way it turned out and will make another some day!

Wool & angora shawl.  I dyed this last summer, than started swatching.  50% wool 50% angora locally spun yarn.  13 wpi.  I had only 5 skeins, 3 white and 2 light gray, so I dyed them together in a rosy bath. 

This yarn is wonderfully soft, and develops a nice halo as it is handled.   I ended up using just the lighter pink for the shawl and even had some left over.

Size 9 needle, original pattern based on shaping from Martha Waterman's Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls
After frogging 3 times I'm happy with the final result.  Nice drape, cuddly and warm!