Shop Update

I have listed 2 new shawls in my Etsy shop this week - have a look!

The Rainbow Shawl 
Have to say I'm really proud of this one! The colors are great and I love the design. It's a semi-circular shawl hand knitted with pure wool yarn.

Purple Plum Shawl
This shawl is knitted with one of my favorite yarns - Zauberball. Love how the colors change creating a lovely striped pattern. This shawl is based on my own pattern as well.

Today on my needles

I'm working on 2 new shawls currently - an airy and super soft mohair/silk stole and yummy purple/pink semi-circular shawl. Can't decide which one is my favorite. I absolutely love working with mohair lace yarn (but HATE unraveling it) but I like how the 2nd yarn creates beautiful striped pattern. 

I've also listed one of my last shawls - a beautiful brown triangular shawl knitted with Crazy Zauberball yarn.  You can find it in my Etsy shop.

New lace shawl in Shetland style

I really like experimenting with different styles and techniques of knitting and maybe that's why most of my shawls are one and only. I have to remember to start writing down the patterns for my shawls as most of them are designed by me.....

This one is a variation of a shawl I've found in one of my knitting books. The shawl is inspired by traditional Shetland shawls. It's worked in garter stitch from the bottom to top, with center panel. I have to say I was slightly terrified after casting over 400 stitches on and the first 20+ rows where a huge pita. I'm half done now and the works goes faster with every finished row.

As I rarely work with stitch markers, this time they were a must! Otherwise I'd have given up after first 5-10 rows.... The tiny stitch markers you can see below where made by my Plurk friend, Selana and I have to say that I absolutely love them as they are very light and perfect for lace knitting! You should definitely check her Artfire shop out!

Busy holidays

It's the last day of my summer holidays... buuu... but it was really great! My mom and brother&sister came to Cyprus to visit me. We had lot of fun and spent most of the time on a beach. I'm 5 shades darker than I was 2 weeks ago!

Here's one of the places we visited - the Aphrodite's Beach, a place where - according to Greek myths - Aphrodite was born from a sea foam. It's beautiful, isn't it?

And that's a place really close to Aphrodite - Kourion Archaeological Site, the ruins of ancient palace and amphitheatre.

I also managed to find some time to knit in the evening - the results are great! I have finished 5 shawls, yes - FIVE! Very productive 3 weeks :-) Here's one of the shawls I've finished - a lovely Halloween coloured semi-circular shawl with decorative lace border. I really like how it ended up, I've used one skein of Crazy Zauberball yarn - my new love!

Monday Update

So I finally finished the custom shawl I've been working on last week - it looks great! I hope the nice lady who ordered it will love it as much as I do. I knitted the shawl based on one of my own knitting patterns available on Ravelry. I used hand dyed merino/angora yarn.

I've also started working on another project (I know, I'm crazy.... but I can't just sit and do nothing). It's a next shawl, this time knitted with 2 different colors - olive green and dusty blue. The yarn was also hand dyed by me and this idea for a shawl was in the back of my mind for last couple of months.

New packaging for MadelinesWardorbe shawls

To cut on the shipping costs, I decided to change a bit the way I pack the shawls before shipping - I use standard white envelopes, a rubber stamp I made by myself some time ago and the yarn the shawl inside the envelope was knitted with.

I use various colors of ink to stamp the envelopes - I think they look quite cute :-)

On the needles

Today, I have a lovely custom ordered shawl on my needles. I hand dyed the yarn by myself and the customer really likes it (yay!). The color is quite difficult to describe, one time it looks like rose pink, the other - like peach.

That's the yarn before:

And that how it looks on my needles:

I'm using one of my own patterns - Addi Rectangular Shawl available on Ravelry for $5.

WIP Day 1: Lime green leaves lacy shawl

Here grows a new shawl! I have to say I really love this color and it matches the leaves pattern perfectly! The yarn is pure merino & I'm knitting using 2 strands of it to make the shawl slightly heavier. The yarn is lovely but really thin.

I heart mohair - another shawl is growing fast

Yes, I know I'm crazy :-) Here comes another of my shawls, this time in beautiful pink shades. The mohair was handdyed by one of Etsy sellers - mynameisyarn. I bought it last year and used half of the skein for this shawl and couldn't decide what to do with the other half. I didn't want to waste it! And here it is, a beautiful rectangular shawl. I still have to finish the body panel and knit a nice edging. I just hope I have enough yarn for the edging. If not - I have a nice plan B.

Ocean Weaves Shawl

Today I want to present you one of my new shawls - its design is based on traditional Shetland shawls.

I used a beautiful yarn by King Cole called Riot DK - it's a single ply, double knitting yarn that comes in various colors - I'm absolutely in love with it, this is my 2nd shawl knitted with this yarn and definitely not the last one!

Work in progress - violet leaves shawl

Here's one of the projects I'm working on right now. Have to say I like it a lot! 

Purple hand dyed yarn for a custom order!

A new yarn I hand dyed for a custom ordered shawl. It was a difficult one, the yarn seems not to like a blue dye but I finally managed to get the color I wanted. I had to dye it 4 times to get the hue but it was definitely worth it!.

That reminds me I have to order more undyed merino/angora yarn - that was my last skein and I have to say I really love the feel of this yarn. It's very nice and soft and is not as "solid" as pure merino.

Here's a shawl I hand knitted using the same type of yarn, dyed olive green.

Quick post-Christmas update

I'm back and have 2 brand new shawls ready to be listed in my shop! Just have to fix the rest of the images and I'll be ready to go. Both of them are 100% natural wool, very nice and soft. Can't decide which one I like more - these are two of my very favorite colors.

I will be updating the shops with new items during the weekend, somehow I still can't force myself to go back to my standard routine.

Behind The Shawl #1

I decided to start a new series of posts on my blog, showing the process of hand knitting of the shawls available in my ArtFire shop. Here is a story of a beautiful hand knitted wrap I've finished yesterday:

So it all started from a ball of beautiful and soft yarn (80% merino 20% angora to be precise).

For the main body of the wrap  I decided to go with one of traditional Estonian patterns called Pohlamarjakiri or Ligonberry Pattern. It's a very nice pattern, looks great when knitted with lace yarn and slightly bigger needles. 

After 5 days, the wrap's main body was finished and it was time for the decorative edge. I had to pick up stitches from all 4 sides of the wrap - 648 in total.... sounds scary, I know!

 After another 2 days of knitting, the lace edging was finished and the wrap was almost done. Next, it had to soak for one hour in a warm water with liquid soap added and then....

... while it was still wet, gently pinned to a wooden frame to stretch and shape it ( if you ever wash a shawl like this by yourself, you can simply stretch it on your bed and use pins to block it). I left it like this for a night to slowly dry.

And here's the final result! 

A hand knitted lacy wrap that goes perfectly with a wedding dress as well as with everyday jeans! 

You can find it in my ArtFire shop.

Now, it's time for some numbers behind this shawl!

75cm - the width

178cm - the height

87g - the weight

7 - number of days invested

670 - meters of yarn used

and last but not least...

91*320 + (92*2 + 232*2)*20 = 29120 + 12960 =...

42800

total number of stitches worked.