Michelle makes a shawl

This is a simple garter stitch shawl. Formed by starting with 5 stitches. Stitch markers were placed either side of the center stitch. Increases were made by yarn overs on either side of the center stitch and just inside the edge stitches. The yarn overs were closed by knitting through the back of the stitch on the next row. I spent some time looking for a simple-ish shawl to make with this yarn. I ran across the pattern for the simple garter stitch shawl (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/very-simple-garter-stitch-shawl) and thought that that would be boring the best to show off the color of the yarn. I'm very proud of how the yarn turned out. I found this website (http://theworkisgettingtome.blogspot.ca/2011/09/how-to-dye-long-gradient-with-wool-and.html) and loved the idea of being able to do this gradient. She had done a single color. I thought I would try a second color and see if I could get the one to blend into the other. A problem that I ran into is that the Fisherman's wool skeins are larger than the Paton's used by the person in this blog. I balled up the wool and dyed the purple first and rinsed it as she did in her blog. I then let it dry and balled it again with the purple on the inside. I used more Kool Aid for the red and ended up basting the ball to see if I could get the color in further. It worked. I rinsed and dried it then redid the purple to try to close the white gap in the middle. I think it worked.

Because of how it gets balled up, you get a sort of speckled effect. There are areas where the dye can get in further than other areas. In the center of the shawl, you can see where there are intermingling speckles of the two colors. Overall I really like the effect. This makes a normal sized shawl. I'd like it to be bigger, but I'm not sure how yet. I could get more wool, dye it red and add to the bottom. I could get more wool and dye it with a gradient and have it go back to purple. I could add a different color at the bottom. I just like larger shawls.