Sweet Lilac

Sweet Lilac is the fourth shawl of my 2013 collection, 'Ode to the Spring'. The inspiration for this shawl came from my love of variegated yarns and the desire to create a fresh, modern looking classic.

Sweet Lilac shawl

Lilacs were my grandmother's favorite flower and smell, and I grew up looking forward to their appearance in every corner of the house. Now that I am all grown up, I look upon those beautiful memories every Spring when my own lilac trees are in bloom.

Sweet Lilac - close up on crescent shape

Sweet Lilac was designed with the variegated yarns in mind, using garter stitch in the body and a large eyelet pattern for the border. Long picots are adding just a touch of originality to a great classic.

Sweet Lilac crescent shape

The long narrow shape with a strong curve in the center is given by a few short rows in the middle of the shawl, which can be avoided if you dislike them.

Sweet Lilac - close up on short rows

The crescent shape makes this shawl wrap wonderfully on the shoulders and as a scarf also, for a versatile little accessory!

For this shawl, I based the design on a lovely skein of variegated yarn that was lingering in my stash for way too long! 

Knitpicks Stroll Hand painted - color Lake Front

Sweet Lilac is now available for sale individually and as part of the Ode to the Spring collection!



Individual pattern:

Collection :

Earth's awakening

Earth's awakening is the third shawl of my 2013 collection, 'Ode to the Spring'. For this light and feminine shawl, I took my inspiration from the wonderful orderly lines of a freshly plowed cornfield.

Earth's Awakening

I grew up in a small rural town in the Province of Quebec, and our house was surrounded by cornfield, in which I played and caught bugs by the hundreds as a child (I was quite the tomboy!).

Cornfield in the Spring

For this very reason, the sights of neatly aligned little plants in the freshly planted cornfield always makes me smile. This is were the inspiration for the shawl comes from: happy, simple, childhood memories.

Geometric lace on shawl

For this shawl, I chose a yarn that reminded me of corn, by both its color and texture.  I love that the yarn I used is squishy and crisp, and it shows the clean lines of the lace pattern in a very nice way.

O Wool Classic 2-Ply
In color "Haystack"

I chose a clean and crisp lace edging, with strong geometric lines inspired by the cornfields, and coupled it with a simple, long, narrow shape.

The opposite side of the shawl is equally adorned with a very simple lace edging, adding refinement and feminity. 

A more detailed view of the lace edging:

And again, because more pictures is better than fewer:

Earth's awakening is now available for sale individually and as part of the Ode to the Spring collection!



Individual pattern:

Collection :

Return of the swallow

Return of the Swallow is the first shawl of my 2013 collection, 'Ode to the Spring'. This inspiration for this shawl comes from one of the most sought after signs of the return of the Spring: the swallows.

Return of the Swallow shawl

For this shawl, I wanted something both simple and elegant, as more often than anything the beginning of the Spring is cold enough to accommodate a warm accessory even if we feel the need for a flirty outfit. I also wanted to design something sober and clean in lines, but with enough interest to make a stand all by itself, just like the real life swallows.

A real life swallow!

In Return of the Swallow, we have an interesting construction with a diagonal sideways knit, coupled with a simple lace edging. The diagonal sideways construction creates a long, narrow shape with a wide angle, accentuated by the soft curve of the lace edging, which is knitted on the live stitches of the shawl at the end. 

All in all, it is both elegant and unique in a simple, clean fashion. Return of the Swallow may be just what you need to put you on the right track for a flirty Spring.

As far as my design process goes, it mostly started, as usual, with a beautiful yarn from my stash: a single skein of Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light.

Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light
in color "Fragrant"

I started turning the pages of my favorite stitchionary and found the base for the perfect edging to complement the construction I envisioned for the shawl and Return of the Swallow was born!

I hope you liked the pictures of the shawl: they were taken by the wonderful photographer Carolina Carvalho-Cross of TripleC Photography. Check out her website here!

You can now buy Return of the Swallow!




Or buy the "Ode to the Spring" collection. When you buy the collection, it gives you a significant discount compared to buying each pattern individually!

Devil's mistress shawl

My latest shawl, Devil’s mistress, is a top-down small shawl with a garter stitch body and a very easy lace portion. The name of this shawl is a conjunction of 2 things: the lace portion of the shawl is based on a stitch pattern named ‘Point de Diable’ or Devil’s stitch, and comes from my favorite old French stitchionary. The second thing is that I actually worked on this whole shawl watching the 4 episodes of ‘The Devil’s mistress’, an English Civil War mini-series. I was really in love with this historic mini-series and I decided to give it the name of the shawl, particularly with the idea that the 2 options makes a bit of the dichotomous way the main character lead her life: a rich looking version with a lace edging and a rough, rustic looking version with the picot bind off.

The design features 2 options: the first one is a ruffly picot bind off and the second one is a beautiful vintage attached edging that looks more complicated than it really is (pictured above). 

The picot bind off option of the design requires less yardage than the attached edging and can be made out of most 100gr (about 420yds) skeins of fingering weight yarn. It is also perfect to showcase the beauty of variegated yarns, and was the first sample I made of this particular design.

 

I needed to find a suitable project for this particular skein I had of Knitpicks Stroll Hand Painted in color 'Playtime'. As my usual design process often start with the yarn, I found myself putting this lovely skein of yarn on my 'to design with' pile. It did stay there for quite a long time, was thrown back into my shawl yarn box, retrieved from the box, thrown back in, and so on for a few months until I decided I needed a new shawl for this upcoming Fall 2012.

Playtime - now discontinued!

After working the picot bind off version of Devil's mistress, I had the idea of working the same body but with a vintage lace edging attached to the bottom of the shawl. I love how these attached edging are 'eating' up the live stitches while adding a very delicate touch to the bottom of the shawl. In this particular case, because the lace portion of the shawl has more dramatic increases that the garter stitch body, the large lace edging takes a beautiful rounded shape that makes for a very nice face-framing neckwear.

The attached edging is large and dainty with pointy claws and large double yarnovers. A slip stitch border defines it well from the body of the shawl and the overall effect is both refined and extremely feminine (in my humble opinion!).

The attached edging is also quite simple, and would make for an excellent first time use of the technique, which I describe in the pattern. The attached edging version requires more yardage than the picot bind off option, about 460 yds of fingering weight yarn.

 

For the attached edging option of this design, I chose to work in a solid color luxurious yarn, Knitpicks Capretta, a merino and cashmere blend in a rich dark brown color. I truly loved working with this yarn and I dream about wrapping my neck in this amazing softness!

Knitpicks Capretta - color 'Topaz'

Click this link to see other projects made of this design:  

The Devil's mistress is now available in my Ravelry shop :

In my Craftsy shop, here. 

Champs Fleuris

So, it has been quite some time since my last pattern publication. I have to say for myself that I have been much occupied with more complex designs than before, and this one is certainly my most complex to date. I have to say that it is also my best, at least in my own opinion!

You can buy Champs Fleuris from my Ravelry:

 

Or my Craftsy shop. Champs Fleuris is also the sixth and final design of my collection: It's so FLUFFY!, available on Ravelry.


So, here I present Champs Fleuris, a bottom up shawl with pleats, lace and textured flowers. It is an extremely feminine design, all in ruffles and flowers and perfect to warm up your spirit when the weather forces you to pull on your warmest coat.

It is available in 2 sizes: a kerchief size, using only one skein of fingering weight yarn (blue sample, using Cascade Yarns Heritage silk) and full scale shawl using 2 skeins of fingering weight yarn (pink sample, using Madelinetosh Tosh Light).

Champs Fleuris is started at the ruffles, by casting on a large number of stitches. My suggestion is to place a marker every 50 to 100 stitches as well as a marker to locate the center stitch. This should save you some time and frustration! Also, don't make the mistake of going with the long tail cast on here: you will hate running out of yarn!

Visit my techniques page for a tutorial on how to make the pleats correctly, if you have any doubts!

The next section is a pretty pictorial lace representing a daisy flower, repeated in a single row. This section is charted only, but is fairly easy if you know how to work lace from a chart. The daisies are framed by 2 Vikkel Braids, for which you can have good links in my Techniques page.

Next and main section if the Paquerette stitch body, a very nice textured flower stitch I found in one of my dearest French stitchionary, dating from the early 70's. The flower motif is offered in two option, an aligned option with the flowers aligned with the spine of the shawl (blue sample) and a scattered version (pink sample).

This section is a delicate one to perform, not because of the inner difficulty of the technique, which is quite simple, but because it is a little unusual and may confuse some knitters at first. I do strongly encourage you to try out the motif on some scrap yarn before you start it.

You may also simply opt to place a lot of markers: one for every time you repeat the bracket, to make sure your flowers stay in line. This way, you will ensure you did not forget a p2tog somewhere along the way! I am also providing you with a little visual aid in the form of this small chart, representing a flower motif over the 5 rows it actually takes place over.

In this little chart started from the WS, the dot represent the stitch you use to draw the stitches from, the arrows are the added sts drawn trough the fabric and the p2tog are placed so the drawn sts are placed before the sts they are purled with. The total flower motif takes 5 stitches, and if you do not count the added stitches drawn trough the fabric to create the flower, those stitches do not change.

This all makes for a shawl you should be extremely proud to wear, in the spring and summer over your favorite dress or in the Fall and Winter to brighten up your woolen coat.