Sunday, October 22, 2017

Halloween


I'm back.

Life went in different directions for a while, but I never stopped knitting. I'll post some of past creations as we go.

The new thing is that this year I have begun spinning. The art yarns on etsy filled me with desire, so I tried a drop spindle, and became entranced, so I ended up buying a spinning wheel. More on this at a later time.

Today I wanted to show my latest shawl.



The solid white is some yarn I spun from fiber that glows in the dark. I spun it for a misbegotten Halloween shawl that I pulled out before making this one. It was based around the wonderful Pendle Witch Illusion, but I'm just not made for solid color knitting, so I made the contrast color a mix of Halloween colors. I got 60 rows in, out of 100, and it just wasn't 'reading' as a witch from the side. (It may also have been yarn weights instead of the colors, I'm not sure why.) I ended up pulling it all out, which was a sad day.

I thought I'd wait until after Halloween before trying something else, but the yarns looked so inviting, so in the end, I whipped this one out in about 8 days so I could hang it for a couple weeks before the holiday in my office.

And now making a Halloween shawl is out of my head. I grabbed some free motifs, modified them as needed, and used some lovely orange and black Alp Supreme yarn for the non-picture parts.

Here is the top.


Here are the bats near the edge. The fringe is some Circulo Tecido Trico ruffle in white, which I cut in strips and knitted in by a hole in it, because I thought it looked ghosty hanging that way.


Here is a part I made up myself, attempting to make it look like ghosty faces. (Yes, this is the glow in the dark part, which looks cool in a dark room but doesn't show up on film at all.)


For something made in a determined rush, it has been very popular at the office.

And my cat Ellie is extremely proud of being a model!