Gradient Mistral Shawl
For this lovely shawl, I used Freia Fine Handpaints Ombre Lace Yarn, www.freiafibers.com, in the denim colorway which ranges from a deep denim blue to a pale chambray blue. I can see this shawl getting lots of use all year, especially with my favorite white t-shirt and jeans.
Freia yarn is laceweight, 75% wool and 25% nylon, 645 yards (590 meters) and I used size US 4 needles. I bought it from Webs, www.yarn.com, for $36 plus shipping. The appearance of this yarn is very pretty, kind of a heathered look. It makes a nice lightweight shawl with beautiful coloring. It seemed a bit scratchy when I first started knitting, but once the shawl was washed and blocked, the yarn softened up nicely. I used just about the entire skein, I kept knitting until I pretty much ran out of yarn to do any more repeats. The great thing is the yarn does all the work, no changing of colors with lots of small yarn balls in various colors left over, and only two ends to weave in when done!
The gradient colors flow sideways on this shawl, so you see a nice range of colors when worn. I started with the darkest color, a deep navy, and ended with the pale blue...so the dark blue is at one point and the pale blue ended up along one side. I'm thrilled with the results and am definitely going to make another in one of the other colorways, so I would highly recommendthis pretty yarn for my pattern.
The finished size is: 48" x 63" x 45"
Gauge after blocking: 4.5 stitches and 11 rows per inch
The cool thing about this shawl is that you can fold it and make it into a cowl. Using gradient yarn makes it even more fun trying to get different looks using the color variants. The photo above is an example of how you can get a cowl look by folding the shawl and wrapping it around your neck.
Mistral Scarf
So I am in love with the colors in this yarn combo! I'm not sure my camera can even capture how pretty it is. I used Cheshire Cat yarn by Wonderland Yarns in the "Down the Rabbit Hole" colorway. It is a five skein pack of sock/fingering weight yarn with each skein ranging from a light spring green to a deep olive. Each skein is 128 yards which is plenty to knit up a repeat in each color following the pattern as written. I bought it at Webs as well, $36.50 plus shipping.
I blocked this scarf pretty aggressively to really open up the garter stitches and I'm thrilled with the way the yarn held up, the stitch definition is wonderful. The yarn comes with 5 different colored skeins so I used one color for each stripe/repeat, and size US 4 needles. The resulting size is: 60" long, 8 1/2" wide
Gauge after blocking: 4.5 stitches and 5 rows per inch
I bought 2 different colorways, the other I purchased is called "Golden Afternoon" which is a light gray, steel blue, mauve/rose, golden cream and taupe. Can't wait to knit this one up, it will make a beautiful spring scarf!
If you haven't purchased my Mistral patterns and would like to give them a try, you can buy them right here on my site!
Thanks so much for reading, and happy knitting :-)
~Julie