Drops photoshoot for the Spring-Summer 2011 Designs is done. Now, we need to vote on which designs to include in their collection.
The only problem, among all of these gorgeous, fun, flirty, trendy and unique designs, you can only vote for 10.
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Learn a Flower Bobble Technique to Knit a Fun Shawl
Generally I like knitting patterns where I feel like you can use whatever yarn you have (because my stash is big enough and I want to use it, thanks) and make a successful project. This is one of those times when a special yarn makes the process that much easier.
The Floral Bouquet Shawl from Xandy Peters uses a specific extended color pooling yarn from Feisty Fibers, which allows you to place the bobble flowers with increasing frequency as you knit the project.
It starts with a solid color yarn, then the two color yarn is added in, and you make a bobble whenever you encounter the color pops. This would be hard to replicate with other yarn that doesn’t have the extended color pooling built in.
The background of the shawl is ribbed, making the project reversible.
The shawl uses fingering/sock yarn and comes out to be an asymmetrical triangle that’s 54 inches/137 cm long and 36 inches/ 90 cm deep and 60 inches/150 cm across the top edge.
Xandy says the pattern is for intermediate to advanced knitters. Knowing how to work traditional bobbles would probably help, but there’s a great video tutorial for how to work the floral bobbles so you can practice on other yarn or even incorporate the bobbles into other projects.
The bobbles are five-petaled flowers but they also kind of look like starfish to me, which could be fun on a child’s cardigan or other pattern. They’d also be fun on the leg of a sock or around the brim of a hat for extra whimsy.
The pattern includes photo and video tutorials, and written and charted instructions. It also includes tips on what to look for if you choose to use different yarn for the project, and instructions on how to dye your own yarn to use in the project.
If you want to give it a try, you can find the pattern on Ravelry.
[Photo: Xandy Peters]
I often find that I cant’ get the drops website to work. Even today, a lot of the thumbnails would open up and the rollovers showed half off the screen. I had to go back to vote a couple of times before it did anything besides time out the page. And apparently my comments contain forbidden words (ie., if I left even one word in comments or address, I got the can’t submit because of forbidden words, message) Anyone else have this issue with their website?