Smaug Shawl - Border Started!

I am very happy with how the border is looking, although the colors are not quite right in the picture.  Reds are hard to capture, it seems.  I am using red beads on the border and I also changed where I placed them.  For the Wyvern Shawl I placed them at the tops of the centered double decreases, but for this shawl I am placing them between the ssk and k2tog that lead up to the centered double decreases and I really like how that looks.  Just 29 more repeats to go.

Pattern:  Over the Moon by Vicki Mikulak

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Sundara Yarn Extra Fine Fingering Merino

Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Joy to the World - Dragons - Cast On!

As I was getting close to starting the edging on my Smaug Shawl I grabbed the rest of this 2018 Advent set, a 12 skein set called Dragon.  The skeins go from 1 to 12 from left to right, with 1 to 6 on the bottom row and 7 to 12 on the top row.  Given the variety of color I had already decided to make another Joy to the World shawl. 

This is the one that I made back in 2021.  It was an Advent set from Biscotte & Cie.  I had made a mistake when I was knitting it, knitting 10 rows of each of the mini skeins, but I liked how it had come out and decided to do it again with this set.  I have worn this shawl several times and it really is a joy to wear.  It sits nicely on the shoulders and is a nice size.  So, I went in search of a color to use as the center of the main triangles and border.  Given the variety of colors in my mini skeins I knew I wanted something on the neutral side, fortunately I had some neutral skeins of Unique Sheep Kiri in my stash.  The full sized skein is the darkest of a neutral trio that I picked up at some point.  The other thing that I had to figure out was the number of rows to work with my mini skeins.  My original Joy to the World had 10 mini skeins of 25 grams each, but for this one I have 12 mini skeins of 20 grams each.  Based on my yarn usage I knew that I could not get 10 rows out of each mini skein and still work the design as I wanted, so I decided that I will work 8 rows.  This will give my 96 rows total for the mini skein section, instead of 100 rows, so I will work 4 extra rows of the starting triangle.  Based on my yarn usage numbers it should all work out.

And here is the start of my first triangle.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert, modified

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Smaug Shawl - Skein 2 Done (Almost)!

This has been the project that goes in my work bag so that I have something to work on while reading documents or sitting in virtual meetings.  I have almost worked all of the second skein and am almost to the last increase row where I double my stitches.  This pattern isn’t quite an Elizabeth Zimmerman Pi shawl because it has increases on the edges on the right side rows, but for the increases rows it does follow the basic Pi shawl formula.  Once I do the next increase I can just knit as established, until I use up all six of my mini skeins.  They are not enough to require another increase row (thank goodness) as I end up with almost 500 stitches as is.

I did have a bit of an “oh no” moment when I pulled it out at work this past week because I had forgotten to load the project in to my knitCompanion app on my phone, which is an Android device.  If it had been an iPhone it would have just been there for me to use, but as it is not I have to upload it to Dropbox and download it onto my phone and I had forgotten to do that.  So I grabbed the pattern from my Ravelry library and had to do the set up all over again, and then figure out where I was.  Fortunately the pattern has stitch counts for all of the repeats so it wasn’t too hard.

Pattern:  Over the Moon by Vicki Mikulak

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering

Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)
 

Wyvern Shawl - Edging Halfway Done (Almost)!

This has been my TV knitting this week and although this picture only shows 12 repeats of the border chart I am actually halfway through repeat 16, so I am halfway done with it.  I was glad to be able to spread it out and get a sense of how it was going to look when it is finished.  I am very pleased with the colors and the beads.  I almost bought new beads but ended up finding something in my stash, which made me very happy, as I have a lot of stash and it does feel good to use it.

Pattern:  Over the Moon by Vicki Mikulak

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering & Sundara Yarns Extra Fine Merino Fingering

Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Unique Sheep Advent Club - Days 16-24

I decided to wait and finish up the Unique Sheep Advent Calendar in one fell swoop.  So here is the remainder of the skeins from the Mermaid set - Days 16 to 24.

And here they are on order - Skeins 1-12

And skeins 13-24.  It is a lovely gradiance.

And here are the final days of the Dragon Set - Days 16-24.  Apologies for the slightly fuzzy picture.  I didn't realize it was fuzzy until I had put all the skeins together.

Here are Skeins 1-12.  I thought about making a Lamina Shawl out of them, using the light gray that I had ordered last year, but now I think I will make another Easy Bias Lace shawl.  I have all of these skeins caked up and weighed.

And Skeins 13-24.  These are the two Gradiance sets, Smaug and Wyvern.  I thought about doing one of my color study shawls, in which case I would have to order yarn for the knit on border, but now I'm thinking I will make a couple of Anna Victoria patterns.

Unique Sheep Advent Club - Days 9-15

Here is a weeks worth of skeins from the Mermaid Advent Calendar.  And here is what we have so far in the Mermaid set.

Skeins 7 through 12.

And Skeins 16-24.

Here is a weeks worth of skeins from the Dragon Advent Calendar.  And here is what we have so far in the Dragon set.

Skeins 1 through 7.

The Smaug gradiance.

And the first 2 skeins of the Wyvern gradiance.

Unique Sheep Advent Club - Days 1-8

I have not been keeping up on my Advent posting, so I'm cutting back on what I'm going to post.  I'm saving the Craftvent sets for after the holidays, but I am opening the Unique Sheep boxes every day and posting them on Ravelry in the Advent Club thread.  I've decided I'll post the pictures here once a week, instead of every day, just to manage my time and commitments a bit better.  So - first the Mermaid set.  I got this set on the Sport weight yarn, which I don't think I've ever worked with.  This set will make a full Gradiance circle when all the boxes are unwrapped.  Above are the first 3 days.

And here are days 4 and 5 of the Mermaid set.

And days 6 & 7.  There is a definitely a color theme going on here, and I like it very much.  I've already pretty much decided I'll make another capelet with the yarn.

And these are the first 3 days of the Dragon set.  The Dragon set has 2 6-skein gradiance sets plus other coordinating colors.

Days 4 & 5 introduced one of the 6-skein sets - Smaug.

Days 6 & 7 are both from the Smaug gradiance set.

And finally, Day 8 of both sets.  Mermaid is on the left and Dragon is on the right.

After opening the boxes I've been putting the skeins into two large zip-lock bags to keep them safe and clean, but thought it would be fun to lay all of the skeins out and see what we've got so far.

For the Mermaid set, we've got skeins 7-11 and 22-24.

For the Dragon set, we've got skeins 1-4, and skeins 3-6 of the Smaug gradiance set.

Unique Sheep Advent Calendar - Day 2

Day 2 of The Unique Sheep Advent Calendar.  Mermaids in Sport weight on the left.  Dragons in Fingering weight on the right.

Unique Sheep Advent Calendar - Day 1

I also, of course, purchased The Unique Sheep's Advent Calendar again.  This year they offered two different color inspirations - Dragons and Mermaids.  I got them both.  The Dragons I ordered in the fingering weight yarn, and the Mermaids I ordered in the Sport weight yarn.  I had Laura pack both calendars in the same box.

Mermaids, Sport weight, on the left.  Dragons, Fingering weight, on the right.  I don't know what I will make with the yarn yet.  I like to see all the colors before I decide.  I do know that the Mermaids set forms a complete gradiance, so maybe I'll make another capelet.