SparkleShan

Last night I released a new knitting pattern that I designed last year. I designed a cowl to use hand spun yarn, but really any yarn can be used. There are directions for knitting the cowl in either fingering weight or DK weight yarn. This is only the second knitting pattern I have ever designed, but I am hoping to work on more designs this year. I am offering a free copy of the cowl pattern on Ravelry (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/reverse-seed-stitch-cowl) until April 2nd, using coupon code 'newspring'. I would love to see more people knitting this pattern and please share them with me in my Ravelry group here .        

Today I celebrated Qingming with my family. It's an over 2,500 year old Chinese tradition, of paying your respects to your ancestors that have passed away. The Qingming Festival is an opportunity for celebrants to remember and honour their ancestors at grave sites. Young and old pray before the ancestors, sweep the tombs and offer food, tea, wine, chopsticks, joss paper accessories, and/or libations to the ancestors.  After the gravesweeping was done our grandfather made us some delicious homemade Chinese food.                                               

In honor of Pi Day, we are doing a Pi Shawl Knit a long in Bohoknitterchic's Ravelry group. I am knitting the Doubloon Shawl . This will probably end up being the biggest thing I have ever knit once I am done, as it calls for 2000 yards of lace weight yarn. I am using a yummy alpaca, cashmere, silk blend yarn hand dyed by my friend Carrie. This is my first time knitting with lace weight yarn. Here is a shot of my progress so far.                                                   

I am in love with Fleece Artist Yarns. I knit the Strange Bird shawl using Fleece artist Merino 2/6 yarn in the most awesome colorway, Pinata. The shawl is rather small and only used 127 yards of the yarn. The blocked size ended up being 24 inches by 19 inches. I think if I knit this a second time I would go up a needle size since I am a tight knitter and this came out pretty small. The picot binding took forever!                                                   

My Friend Brittany Wilson designed an awesome shawl, Gowan , and I did a test knit of it for her. I knit the shawl using hand dyed sparkle sock yarn from another friend Carrie. I used about 380 yards of yarn and the size of the shawl after blocking was 51 inches by 22 inches. You can check out Brittany's other awesome pattern designs here .