My Garden of Shadows

It's funny.  Here's where we connect different kinds of threads...

I picked up knitting after 35 years of strictly crocheting in 1998.  I had become ill, and was making very long trips of several hours at least twice a month - and needed something new to pique my interest and distract me from both my husbands driving (which was phenomenal, but my skills at being a passenger were not) and the excruciating pain coursing through my body of unknown origin.

My grandmother taught me to knit when I was 9... one pattern.  These:

My mother crocheted... and knew how to knit one thing.  These slippers... every color that Red Heart put out.. doubled yarn on size US8 straight needles.  Not a hard pattern, not at all, and great for a beginner to learn with, but we never got past this one pattern, and they always fell of my feet.  Me being me "if I'm not good at it, I will find someone more capable and we'll trade" and not loving the end result I lost interest.

I had been admiring the smooth soft lines of hand-knit items for years, and somehow could not get my mind around how the skills I learned pictured above could ever become a shawl.... until now.  Connect the Threads Lori, once again... a craft that seemed so "grandma" once (and do not take offense for I now have 4 biological and 3 just as special grandchildren as of the new addition of Lucy Ann on the 2nd of this month) had evolved without my paying attention into the artform it is today.

I am so glad I picked up that little book with cast-on instructions 14 years ago... I love testing for other designers as I gather the courage to publish some of my designs.. learning the ins and outs of pattern writing, testing, and marketing via contacts that really know what they are doing, or we are learning together and either is equally awesome!!  So I present here for your optical enjoyment my very first completed shawl.

Garden of Shadows Shawl

by Marilyn Giselle Maupin

I must tell you this was amazing for so many reasons....

First of all, I love to test knit, and do all my tests through the Free Pattern Testers Group on Ravelry.com.  Anytime I just don't know what to make yet, and most of the time alongside of something else I'm making as well - I will look for a test knit.  It helps me use stash. It gives me a feeling of helping another designer.. and it keeps me in touch with what a deadline really is.

Paulette Richardson, one of my oldest "Cyber-Fiber Friends" created this skein of Sock Yarn for me especially.  She has been support for me since 2008.  She owns Coulrophobia Yarns on Etsy, and the blue is her yarn to me - in her base Hippiechic.  She named it "Bad A$$ Survivor" in my honor.  I had it for a few years before this test knit said, "Now.  Use the Bad Ass yarn now"... and so it began.  The yarn was so soft, beautiful and I was ever more and more excited as the tonal color changes began to do that magic that they do as a fabric begins to emerge from the needles.

As is sometimes the case, and the reason smart designers have their patterns tested, the yardage that the prototype was made with differed with the actual yardage coming off of my skein and I realized by the time the lace panel was finished that it was a shame I had not covered my bases by choosing a yarn of which I had two skeins just in case - or so I thought.  I made lemonade!  I had just gotten in a couple of bags of Ice Angora Superfine (black, and grey - which I bought thinking "you never buy solid colored yarn and someday you are going to need this) and the grey was just perfect... this yarn is a finer gauge than the Hippiechic, and though I was apprehensive, I just did not have any other thing sitting around that would work.. and the original yarn was one of a kind.

I really could not be more pleased.  The angora is super soft, and really warm for how thin the fabric is. The difference in yarn gauge did not affect fabric gauge whatsoever, and I love the way the thin lines of blue pop off of the grey and you can see the whole squiggly thread on each side.  I did some lace work with fingering and mohair ala what's in Romantic Lace (book) using this technique in garter stitch.. but I do believe that it looks just as nice and stands out just as well in stockinette.

I am well pleased.