A Shetland Circular Mini Shawl dyed with cochineal

I have been knitting a series of mini shawls in a Shaping Shawls series of workshops with Elizabeth Williamson Knitting (1).  This is actually the second. I will write more about the first one when I describe the third which I hope will be very soon. I have got so involved in knitting, weaving and dyeing that my writing now needs to catch up. 

The completed shawl

Diameter  25.5cm (10”)     Weight 10.5g

…and this has been my first ever circular shawl, so I was very keen to try it. The idea being that by doing this mini one, and learning the processes needed, the knitter can scale it up to the size desired.

I decided to use some alpaca fibre that I had spun ‘lace weight’ rather than superfine and that I would dye it in two toning colours. I choose to dye it with cochineal. Again this was a first, my first time dyeing alpaca and dyeing it with a natural dye too.I chose 20% and 10% cochineal as this gives a good colour to wool, and I decide to use tap water to give a ‘cooler’ tone to the pink. 

2 balls of dyed cochineal alpaca yarn, yes very little difference and all calculations were at least double checked! 

The yarn is more unevenly dyed than I like, just about visible in the picture below but confirmed in the picture of the completed piece.

I was very disappointed by the dyeing…..subtle is a polite way of putting it. All disappointments like this are learning opportunities and so I set about reading about dyeing, and natural dyeing particularly, of alpaca. 

I kept reading that dyeing alpaca was ‘just like dyeing wool’ which it clearly wasn’t! This is with the exception of Jenny Dean (2) who did note that ‘the colours are probably less saturated than those achieved on sheep’s wool. So this led me to why? I know not all wools dye the same but the difference is not as stark as with alpaca. I had some understanding of the differences in the fibre from spinning alpaca. I have written an additional page for my website about comparing the two fibres. However, I did not feel I could get a balanced comparison as people who breed and keep alpaca, as one might expect, write about the virtues of the fibre and I was interested in getting comparative facts. If you are interested further in what I did find out, I have given a link to the page on my website below.( 3) 

So more about the circular mini shawl. This starts in the centre and is knit back and forth to form the centre section, this is knitted in garter stitch. This was fun to do, just more and more stitches on the needle. 

Then the stitches are left on the needle and the edging is started, knitting onto these stitches, every other row. I chose to do the outside lace in the different hue of pink. 

Preparing for the inner join

(The actual colour is better shown in the completed shawl above)

If you follow this blog, you will realise you have seen this shawl before, that is because I used the outer edging to try out, on my own, the invisible joining of lace devised by Joni Coniglio. The post relating to this in some detail is in the post here of 28Nov2021. The details of this superb method can be found in Interweave Knits winter 2022 and explained by Joni Coniglio in her blog (4). When I did this shawl I did not realise she had chosen this lace edging as the example in her blog! 

The invisible join of the edging - in here! 

Once the edging is finished, one  is left to join the centre section together by grafting along the remaining crescent and then the edging. 

Other than being disappointed in the colour, I loved doing this and can see some more of this size coming off the needles before too long, and then I need to be working on a bigger size one. However the next in this series of hap shapes is a mini crescent shawl. For that I will be dyeing the yarn with a plant from the garden but be using wool! 

Notes 

1. Elizabeth Williamson can be found here, her website includes details of her online workshops https://www.elizabethwilliamsonknitting.co.uk/
2. Jenny Dean’s post on natural dyeing with alpaca https://www.jennydean.co.uk/dyeing-alpaca-fleece/
3. Link to the page on my website comparing wool and alpaca   https://jemcreatingtextiles.wordpress.com/about-alpaca/
4. Joni has written much about grafting lace  and has made 3 videos/dvds about this and an excellent blog post about grafting lace edgings this can  be found here https://www.interweave.com/article/knitting/grafting-a-lace-edging-is-as-easy-as-1-2-3-4

Design Inspiration

We are staying in a beautiful spot, having sea on 3 sides is wonderful. We spent a day driving round Nesting – there is a lot to explore further if we have time. I did manage to do some of the alpaca scarf, it is getting much closer to the 10” from the tip that I am aiming for but each row is getting longer and much concentration is needed for the pattern. An unexpected highlight was spotting 8 Eider through the telescope before breakfast. On Monday we went on another exploratory drive in the morning and had our coffee stop in a wonderful isolated patch of moorland. My driving skills are improving; I had forgotten how hilly/mountainous parts of Mainland are. We are very excited as we have booked a midnight bird watching trip to Mousa.  We pottered on ‘our’ beach and I have loads of photos as inspiration for yarn and knitwear design. This is one of my favourites; a knitted top is in my mind’s eye.  

 

I seem to have an infinite number of favourites which is going to cause me have some tough (but pleasant) decisions to make later.

 

A day on Fetlar

What an amazing day! We caught the morning ferry to Fetlar, the sun shone, it was hot and Fetlar was beautiful. The aim was to go to the Loch of Funzie and hopefully see a red necked phalarope! We weren't lucky but we did see some great flowers, the wonderful Tresta beach and had a thoroughly relaxing time.

Today I didn't spin outside but I did knit some of my amazing alpaca scarf in THE most glorious setting. No picture of me doing it though, Michael was taken up birdwatching. Instead here is part of my view as I knitted - but it doesn't do justice to what it was really like.