I know I’ve been quiet lately. Work has been insane, life in general has felt chaotic and overwhelming, and to top it off I’ve had to put several recent designs in “time out” because they haven’t been behaving.
Fortunately, this was not one of those designs! I’ve been in love ever since conception and it’s been agony to wait until the pattern was formalized and cleaned up, ready for release!
Finally the day has arrived when I can share it with the world – and today is that day :-).
I love gradient yarns and I had been dying (no pun intended) to try and make either a crocheted or knitted version of an idea I had bouncing around my head. Then I received an email from a lovely Madison, Wisconsin – based company call KnitCircus. They have a unique, proprietary way of creating their gradient yarns – and 90% of their business is about the gradients. They even make matching gradient socks sets, if you’re the type of person that wants their socks identical.
I found a cake of their Ballerina yarn in a colorway called “Spring Flowers Panoramic Gradient”. I liked how the colors reminded me of an evening sunset – pink and orange for the setting sun to a light blue-green to a brighter blue for the sky. And that was how the “Heaven and Earth Shawl” was born.
I had one problem however. The particular skein I purchased was slightly less than 400 yards, and the stitches chosen make for a less airy shawl than most one-skein shawls use. I was running out of yarn before it was large enough. Fortunately I realized this right at the time that we went to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival. KnitCircus was one of the vendors and I was hoping they would have a solid or semi-solid yarn, in a compatible material make-up, slightly darker than the ending blue.
I found the perfect match in their KnitCircus Greatest of Ease yarn, colorway A New Day! That deep blue takes you from the sunset up to the twinkling stars of night!
I know a quite a few fingering-weight yarn manufacturers are adding 650 yard skeins to their collection for people that want make shawls larger than what a 400 yard skein will allow. The bigger sized skeins would be perfect for this shawl – or you can do as I did and mix / match smaller skeins until you reach the size desired.
This shawl should be easy enough for a beginner crocheter. It may look complex but it only has a few basic stitch patterns to follow. Using gradient yarns allows for a wider range of options when pairing with clothes in your closet. I’ve worn this shawl to a wedding and a couple times to work – it’s great for a multitude of occasions.
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It is a lovely shawl and I loved the colors!
Thank you! 🙂