Snowtop Mountain Shawl - The Ashton Shawlette

As a member of the message board, Knitting Paradise, I have been the recipient of a very wonderful gift from Dee O'Keefe, lace designer extraordinaire. She has been walking several of us through the process of learning how to knit lace with her Ashton Shawlette pattern. It is almost like being in a knitting class. I search the site for "Ashton" and I come up with several postings with other people's works in process, their questions on the pattern and Dee's tireless assistance and instructions.

Last week, I posted my experience of searching for just the right yarn. While I bought a handful of yarns that could work, my pick for the very first Ashton was the Kauni Effaktgarn wool from Denmark. The color is soothing and the picture does not do justice to the gradual change from dark to light. The colors seem to be all natural colored unbleached wool with the color change coming from slowly spinning in more and more light wool.

The yarn is not too soft, nor is it exceptionally clean as it still has occasional bits of hay and other fiber still stuck in the wool. It has a fuzzy aura to it and I think that it would felt very easily. The 2 ply yarn is not tightly twisted and does split occasionally, but not so much as to make it annoying to knit. I think that this yarn will block out nicely.

I am enjoying this project very much!

Happy Knitting!

Yarn People are Crazy!

Saturday, 7:00 AM, mid January, 14 degrees Fahrenheit  -- and I waited for an hour to get inside. It was the LYS's biggest sale of the year: The "If You Think I'm Counting All This, You Must Be Crazy" Sale was a chance to buy some great yarn at 40% off; but only if you were in line by 8:00 AM.

Unfortunately, I did not go with a plan; I didn't go with a list of what I wanted; I didn't have any patterns. The only thing I had in mind was 400 yards of fingering weight yarn for The Ashton Shawlette by Dee O'Keefe. My feet were burning from the cold when I finally got in the store. And I have to admit, my mind went numb and I didn't know where to start! So I calmed myself down by referring to the short list of yarns that were not included in the sale. I didn't want to waste time looking at yarn that was not on sale. 

Noro! I ran for the shelf that held the beautiful Kureyon Sock Yarn. I grabbed two different color ways: Aqua/Purple and Pinks/Purple. This is a 70% Wool 30% Nylon blend that could be perfect for the Ashton Shawlette! I wanted to make sure that I would have either color to choose from should this be the yarn. Although I have never knitted with this specific Noro yarn, I have knitted two pairs of socks with the worsted weight variety: my road trip socks and my forest footies.

Not completely satisfied with my first possibility, I headed to the back room where most of the sock yarn is stashed. A beautiful variegated yarn caught my eye. This hand-painted 100% Merino Wool from Koigu Wool Designs, KPPPM ranges from a pale apricot through shades of orange into a deep burgundy. Yum! I picked up three hanks totaling 450 yards. This would be a gorgeous Ashton Shawlette in beautiful fall colors.

No sooner had I picked up the Koigu, then I saw a beautiful Kauni lace weight yarn from Danmark. There were several delicious colors, but I liked the chocolate to off-white that will have a self striping effect to most knitted items.

Wow! I had so many wool choices at this point -- maybe I should look at something different. Louisa Harding Yarns; Mulberry in Midnight Blue. The 100% silk yarn is so silky and slippery that the yarn ball won't stay together, but the yarn has a wonderful shine to it. Could this be the yarn for the shawlette?

Back past the Noro shelves. What was that? Did I miss seeing that the first time? I was so busy looking at all of the sock weight and lace weight yarns, I missed the beautiful bulky Noro yarn Hitsuji. Now why, if I was looking for yarn for a lace shawl, would I want to look at a bulky yarn? But it looked so good, with the rust and green and goldenrod colors. Hmmmm. What to do? What to do?

So what did I bring home?

ALL OF IT! Happy Knitting!