A Tale of Six Shawls

..and a bunch of Arm Warmers

 I rather enjoyed making the 'Outlander' inspired costumes and thought maybe I could use any spare time on our trip - as on long, boring, highway drives, and any lengthy ferry rides - to knit shawls, scarves, and arm warmers for some more outfits, that I could potentially offer up for sale.

Not being averse to 'copying' stuff, since it's a lot easier than trying to come up with something unique, I had noted that Claire wears more than one kind of shawl in the series. There's the brown with black stripes, that I already made a version of, and a gray cowl scarf, which I also knit. But there were shots of her wearing a gray and dark green shawl as well....

I gathered together every spool of 'ugly' coloured needle-punch yarn I had - every brown, beige, gray and black - as well as some other skeins of yarn in earthy shades. I thought I'd try some bigger versions as well, and went to Michael's looking for appropriate coloured sock yarns, but the one near us didn't have much selection at all - just some beige and a dark gray. I bought one of each.

I thought I'd start with the gray and green shawl out of the finer yarn I had. I began as soon as we were nicely zooming east down the 401. It took three days to finish, but when I compared it size-wise to the shawl I'd already made for Bianca, it was a lot smaller. I never realized that the yarn was even finer than the needle-punch yarn.

Well, it would be impossible to unravel, with all the decreasing of two stitches at the beginning of every row, so I just had to start over. This time just duplicating the shawl I'd already made., knowing it would turn out the right size.

Then one after another, I made shawls on all the long drives.....each one averaging three days to complete....

After I had three shawls, I wanted to try the first colour combination again, so did some math to figure out how many more stitches I'd need in order for the shawl to come out the right size. I really liked that first shawl colour combination, but there wasn't enough yarn left in those colours, so I ended up using a lighter olive, and a darker gray to make the original colours go far enough. My Bianca immediately claimed that shawl for herself.

Then it was time to try some bigger shawls. The first one I made using the sock yarn from our Michael's, but the last shawl ended up being made from some yarn I picked up at the Michael's in St. John's (the only Michael's in the entire province) They had the yarn I liked in all kinds of dull earthy colours. So I got a ball of many of them. Here's what's left.....

I also knit a lot of arm warmers, a pair to go with each shawl. I could do a pair per day. Then started on some scarves for the guys. I completed one, and started another, but it went on hold after we got home. 

There's still too much to do around here before I can actually get back into making doll clothes again, but at least I have a good start.....