I just swatched for a very special project, my wedding shawl.
Swatching for a shawl is something I've never done before. Swatching for garments, yes, most definitely, but never previously for a shawl, since it's not a fitted garment.
Let's talk about mini-skeins, since we've just listed a few sets in the shop.
We started dyeing mini-skeins as a way of ensuring our dye baths were fully exhausted. When dyeing saturated colours (pinks and reds in particular) there can be a tendency for the dye baths to not fully exhaust, so popping a few mini-skeins in the dye pans after having dyed up our main colourways was a simple and efficient way to ensure all the dye was used up, whilst also creating some fun and one-of-a-kind minis. It's a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned, as you always want to avoid pouring left over dye down your drains.
As soon as we saw the new Tamy Gore pattern Colour Canvas we instantly knew it would be the next shawl on our needles.
The fun pattern works with either two, three or four contrasting colours and features a different take on different shapes and stitches to create a gorgeous shawl.
One of our aims when starting Louie & Lola Yarns was to be as environmentally conscious as possible.
From re-using our dye water to soak our yarns and wash our utensils, being waterwise has come naturally to us after living in the country for five years and having to rely on rainfall for our water supply (we are very lucky though to get very good rainfall here in North West Tassie compared with so many areas of the country in drought).
Huge thank you to everyone who purchased a ticket as part of our Bushfire Fundraiser for the Australian Red Cross Disaster Relief and Recovery Fund in early January.
Together we raised a total of $2,156 for the Red Cross in just over 24 hours!
You can check out our page on the Australian Red Cross Fundraiser site here, which is also still open for donations.
There's nothing better than a well-written and pretty much instantly memorisable one-skein shawl pattern when you're craving the satisfaction of a quick knit.
Add to that a graphic, yet classic design and you have a double winner!
For me, that was Ambah O'Brien's Aperture Shawl, which I knit in our Merino Silk Yak Fingering base in the Aglow colourway last week.
