Because of the items I gravitate towards in knitting, my projects tend to be things that are worked on and finished in a matter of months or sometimes a year.  What can I say?  I like a commitment and adore a challenge.  

I realised recently though, that it can often curb my motivation and leave you- my dear reader, with only hand dyeing adventures to read about week in and week out.  So I thought for the sanity of all of us, I would do a nice cowl in beautiful Malabrigo Rios: Zazamora.

The yarn itself was a present from my mother on the holidays, and I quickly remembered why she is the ultimate queen of colours.  The yarn flowed gracefully between greens, purples, and blues- which was all snuggled in by grey undertones.  

And, just as I had hoped, it made for deliciously easy quick knitting.  I love working with changing colours, and this was a perfect taste of that to make this cowl fly off the needles in a matter of days.  

Which is especially lovely since it seems the weather has decided on snow no matter where I'm going.  The universe appears to find it fitting to have people snuggle on in and get to knitting (or whatever it is that people do).

Stay sweet, stay crafty, and stay tuned.

When on the Rose City Yarn Crawl my eyes kept lingering on this fiber, it beckoned to me gently but also with a strength I became increasingly aware of.  Finally, after seeing it in several shops, I picked it up and agreed to take it home with me.  

It was in that moment that I realised why I like it so much- it's a beautiful representation of the thunder and lightening storms I witnessed when visiting my brother in Chicago.  The sky has this powerful and looming purple and grey, then as the thunder progresses and the lightening strikes, a deep and moody orange swirls and emerges out of the darkness, taking its place among the clouds.  It is both haunting and beautiful.

It was watching these storms that made me change how I felt about orange.  I had always felt like orange was so loud and, at times, obnoxious.  It was only when I saw the subtler side of it that I realised how powerful and brooding it could be.  

The only problem was, there was only one skein, but lucky for me, after a series of dead ends and false hopes, I found not only some yarn to complement the original skein, but also (much to my surprise shortly after posting my mishaps) found a perfect match.

With the perfect match, and complementary skeins next to the original skein that inspired it all, I decided to start making a shawl- so that I may always be able to be cloaked in the lightening of Chicago.  Brooding clouds and all.

The two skeins that were actually close to the same still had a bit of contrast in brightness, as you might be able to see here, but I've decided to pretend that it's all intentional and an artistic way of showing the development of the storm.

However the credibility of my artistic license is perceived, I found that the colours turned out splendid together, and honoured my memory of Chicago well.

Plus taking pictures with the newly finished shawl let me justify wearing my blue lipstick, which is always a charm.

For this project I used herringbone stitch, which was a mess to try and find a good tutorial for, so in the next week or so I'll be posting a tutorial of how to do this stitch!

Stay sweet, stay crafty, and stay tuned.