WIP Wednesday: Daenerys (Round 2)

Let me preface this post by saying that very little of what you're about to read below is typical for my crafting life.

So I've started knitting another Daenerys. It's not that I'm not a re-knitter, I've knit several things more than once, it's that I'm not usually one for essentially chain knitting the same pattern. Especially when that pattern happens to be a rather large shawl. However, I've been wearing the other one around and gotten many, many compliments on it. During one of those wearing/compliment sessions, a long-time friend of mine who's really helped me out and who is also crafty (so understands that crafting takes time and energy) and is a freelancer (so understands that people need to be paid for their crafts) asked me if I would be willing to make her one. Because she is who she is (knitworthy, a good friend, someone who will appreciate it, someone who has done a lot for me, etc.) I said yes. We settled on a price (much lower than if just about anyone else asked me, but I'm the one who set it so I'm obviously fine with it) and she picked some yarn.

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Pattern: Daenerys by Valerie Johnson

Yarn: Knit Picks Chroma fingering in the Drawing Room colourway

She wanted a gradient like mine, but didn't think she was going to like the feel of Kauni, so we settled on knitting it in Knit Picks , which was the first reasonably inexpensive gradient yarn that wasn't Kauni that I could think of off the top of my head. Because she tends to wear a lot of greys and blacks and neutrals, she knew she wanted something that would complement, so she decided on the Drawing Room colourway, which is described on the Knit Picks site as "an elegant group of pastels". I don't disagree with that statement. I will say that this is 110% NOT my colourway, but I do think it will look lovely on her and I admit that it is knitting up rather pretty.

I've worked with Chroma before on my Frostfangs hat and mittens, but they seem to be sourcing it from somewhere new, since it has a different feel to it. It's a bit more slippery feeling, as though it had acrylic or more nylon in it, but according to the label the fibre blend is the same. I definitely like it less than it's predecessor, which, sadly, seems to be the way of many things with Knit Picks these days. It's also different in that the colour repeats mirror one another instead of simply repeating in sequence, so that's an added bit of fun. My biggest concern is that the colour repeats aren't that long, so as the rows get longer there are fewer rows of each colour (which is logical), and I fear I may get to a point where a colour only takes up one row or, worse, part of a row. I bought 2 balls of yarn since she said she'd like hers bigger than mine (and it's fingering weight instead of sport), and I'm nearly through one and the colours are really only taking about 2 - 2.5 rows, so we'll see how things go. I'd like to not have extra yarn since I will never do anything with this colour, but I also know I need to stop before I get to a point where the colours get muddy.

The pattern is easy now that I've done it one and a half times, and I've memorised the main chart. It's still a lovely shawl pattern, really. Not much more I can say about it that I haven't already said.

WIP Wednesday: Losing at Yarn Chicken

Had all gone well, tonight's post wouldn't be about WIPs because I would have a finished object by now. But...

The Daenerys shawl is still on the needles (and looks like it will be for a little while longer). I followed the suggested number of pattern repeats, trying to judge how much I needed for the end, and I guessed incorrectly so now I'm in what feels like a seemingly endless cycle of tinking back about 32 super long rows of lace knitting. I hear you all telling me to just put in a lifeline and rip it back, and I will answer your cries with a resounding I attempted to do this, but I'm not good enough at reading lace knitting so I can't figure out exactly which stitches/row to get the lifeline worked in. So. Instead of risking dropping stitches or putting the lifeline in crooked, I have resigned myself to a lifetime of tinking back.

Here is the shawl at the point I realised I was going to run out of yarn.

​​SMXL

 

Because the edging requires you to be at the end of a pattern repeat, I actually have to rip out the 12 rows of edging and then the 21 rows of my final pattern repeat, which means in this photo I have to essentially rip back to just before I start the dark purple stripe on this Kauni. It's a lot of rows (and stitches), but hopefully it will go quickly and knitting the edging won't take too long. I remain optimistic that you all at least won't see it in the WIPs post next Wednesday.

In an added bonus, I STILL love this colourway. This shawl is going to make me really happy when it's done, so all the tinking is TOTALLY worth it!

Pattern: Daenerys by Valerie Johnson

Yarn: Kauni wool 8/2 Effektgarn in the colourway EI

WIP Wednesday: More Kauni, More Shawl

I joked about it earlier in the year, but it really is starting to look like 2016 is the year of the shawl. Better yet, it's looking like the year of the Kauni shawl. I'm very okay with this.

As my regular readers will know I'm working hard at completing as many challenges as I can in the Knerd Girl Knits Bad-Ass Women Craft-Along. This round is focusing on women in literature, and one of the challenges was to knit something inspired by a woman in literature. The first thought in my head when I read the challenge was "where do I start?!" I have so many amazing, bad-ass female book characters that I've loved throughout my life that I found it hard to pick just one. Admittedly, my current favourite is Blue Sargent from Maggie Stiefvater's A-MAZ-ING series The Raven Cycle, but I don't have a good handle on how I could knit something inspired by her since her style isn't hugely similar to mine. I thought about dyeing her a colourway (that's almost certainly going to happen anyway) and just knitting something with it, but if I was going to do it, I wanted to do it right. I'll still honour Blue some way, but this wasn't the project for it.

The next place my mind went was to Daenerys Targaryen from A Song of Ice and Fire. Although I admit that I've lost my enfranchisement with the TV show, Dany was one of my favourite book characters from the start (and still is at what is currently serving for the end). So I thought, I'll look for dragon-themed patterns to honour her as "Mother of Dragons". I have a whole bunch of red Kauni solid and thought, red could be good for a dragon shawl. Then I got word of Gynx yarns doing a Dye-Along, Knit-Along and briefly entertained the idea of trying to dye red and black yarn and knit it into something. This led me down the Ravelry rabbit hole of Daenerys-inspired patterns and I found one simply called "Daenerys" by Valerie Johnson. It wanted 650yds of fingering weight. So then I was back to the "can I dye the yarn AND knit this in a month?" which didn't seem likely. But then it occurred to me...I had to readjust my thinking! Daenerys is most known for her dragons, BUT!, a year ago I had purchased the perfect Targaryen-coloured skein of Kauni. Which, while it isn't fingering weight, is 650yds and is fairly light for a sport weight. Plus it's a shawl, so there's not really a gauge to it. Now, this yarn isn't what you're thinking. Targaryen house colours are red and black. This yarn is not. No! It transitions from a tan colour to dark purple to light purple to silver grey. If you've read the books you know that a mark of the Targaryen family is that they all have white hair, tan skin, and purple eyes. Daenerys shawl, meet Daenerys yarn! A perfect match made out of perfection and fortuity.

The shawl is a pretty simple (though not yet easy to remember!) dragon scale pattern. I haven't gotten through a full colour repeat of the yarn yet, but I think I might be in love.

It's been going fast, but I'm sure progress will start slowing now that the rows are getting longer.