Copilot Cowl

Copilot Cowl

Copilot is a free pattern on Ravelry.  I decided it was a good choice for some yarn I dyed with Easter Egg Dye a few months ago.  I had some crazy bright orange yarn that I got at a knitting retreat.  At the retreat, I saw that the orange yarn could be a great rust color if over-dyed with blue dye.  I dyed the orange yarn with the blue Easter Egg Dye when I got home. It turned out great.  After dyeing the orange yarn, I noticed there was still a lot of dye in my pot.  I remembered I had some dye-able sock weight yarn in my craft room. I added it to the pot and that is the yarn I used in this project.  

Below you’ll see some random photos of my yarn dyeing session.  I can’t tell you exactly what I did but you can find lots of videos on YouTube which demonstrate how to dye yarn with Easter Egg Dye.

In the photo below, you can see all the yarn I dyed. The rust colored yarn was a bright poppy orange color before dyeing in a blue pot of dye.

Below you can see I had the dye-able wool in the pot (half way in and half way out).  

Above you can see that the entire hank of yarn eventually ended up in the pot (sorry the photos are out of order).  I took some of the Easter Egg Dye pellets and nestled them into the yarn in the pot of water on the stove top.  It was all very random and experimental.  Fun!

Copilot is a great knit for travel or watching TV.  

The cowl is very long and I like wearing it doubled up around my neck. I like wearing cowls since I don’t have to worry about them falling off when wearing them like I do with triangular shaped scarves/shawls.  

Here is the link for the Copilot pattern:  https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/copilot

Charmayne

Charmayne

Charmayne, as you can see, is a heavily beaded shawl.  The free pattern comes from “Knitty” and you can find it HERE:  http://knitty.com/ISSUEss18/PATTcharmayne/PATTcharmayne.php

The pattern instructions specify you can make a small or a larger version of the shawl; I made the small version based upon the amount of yarn I had.  My skein of yarn was 100 grams; I had 15 grams remaining after finishing the shawl.  The yarn I used is hand dyed and comes from Andromeda Sock Yarn.  The yarn’s maker is from Colorado Springs, Colorado, and she sells yarn on line and also at my LYS (Yarned & Dangerous, Canon City, Colorado).  The yarn’s color way is “Take a Hike”.

Some completed projects are easier to photograph than others.  I feel as if this was a challenging project to capture in photos.  I am including a bunch of photos so you can see the shawl from a variety of angles.  

If you are interested to know, I think I used about 50 grams of beads in this project.  The beads are Unions 6/0 Miyuki beads and the color is Metallic Mix (01610).  When I started the project, I only had one tube of beads (20 grams).  As I was knitting along, it occurred to me that I did not have nearly enough beads.  After searching for a good long while, I found two more tubes of the same beads on eBay.  Phew... what a relief!

This was a super fun knit. The shawl starts with just a few stitches and grows from there.  As you knit along and the project grows wider and wider, you are pretty much just working in stockinette and then you pay close attention to one edge of the project where the lace and beads are being worked.  At the very end, when the project is quite wide, you complete the final lace border which contains gobs of beads.  I have to admit I was dreading the lace border. I was worried it would be fussy and slow and too labor intensive.  As it turns out, the lace border was not that slow and it was fun.  This is such an enjoyable knit that I can see myself making another Charmayne shawl.