Wedding Shawl Choice

Wedding Shawl Choice
Originally uploaded by sunasak

If you've been reading for a while, you will remember there was a post at the top of the blog for a few months asking for suggestions for things to make for my wedding, which is supposed to be sometime this fall (a nice time for a Texas outdoor wedding). Well, yesterday I made the decision, and found the future yarn for the shawl, too.

I'd been waffling over a couple of things, but kept coming back to the idea of the "A Girl's Best Friend" shawl from Jade Sapphire. I wanted the pattern so badly that I asked the kind blogger who'd made the first copy I saw for her pattern, because I could not find it for sale anywhere online or locally. I had a vision in my head of it in a very pale gold color with clear beads lined in gold (the shawl has 1600+ beads in it).

Moving forward to yesterday, my friend Jody and I went driving around to various fiber enterprises north of where I live. She was getting lots of wool to spin and a carder. I just needed to get out of the house of illness and poverty, so I went along for the ride.

The first place we went to was the headquarters of Outback Fibers, which imports lovely wool and silk from Australia. The lady who owns it is a felter, and we saw some truly lovely and artistic felted items in her studio--if you like felting (not knitted items, but felting using wool or silk rovings or batts), take one of their workshops if you get a chance! The lady also had a LOT of fiber, so it was fun looking at the beautiful colors and textures.

Jody picked out a beautiful collection of colors to use in her spinning (her current obsession, though I hope she also gets back to the dyeing), and I was just looking at all the collections and bags of lovely things a person with money could buy, when I saw a sample in a packet of neutrals. It was a creamy white with occasional dabs of slightly creamier color. I said, "Oh, Jody, this looks like the yarn for the wedding shawl." She agreed, then I said I'd hoped for a slightly more gold tinge, and our hostess then pulled out a lovely light tan and we agreed that a bit of that would make the perfect color. Woo!

So, Jody got me some--lots of the cream, a little of the tan. I am sure the URL here shows the right cream in ghost gum, but not sure if the chamois is the right tan. Jody will tell us, no doubt.

So, I was all happy, and enjoyed the visit to the next place, which was Fire Ant Ranch. I enjoyed looking at and petting her horses, which include one extremely beautiful bay Trachner gelding and a more plain brown mustang mare with the most beautiful eyes I ever saw on a horse--I swear they were hazel. Plus a mule that was as old as Jody. Jody enjoyed learning how to card wool, and I did an admirable job NOT buying any of the Opal sock yarn conveniently displayed in the sale shed.

After all that fun we came home to the House of Sickness and entertained Lee while Jody spun up a sample of the wedding shawl yarn, or one idea for it. She is thinking of spinning one ply in just the cream, and one in cream with the tan in it. She showed me some of the yarns she had spun as samples and they were spectacular--one brown one there is enough for a shawl in. MMM. It has little flecks of sari silk in it, plus a wee bit of shine. Not enough to detract from the wool, just enough to enhance. She also had some black with red sari silk bits in it that was really cool. Her Etsy sources are marvelous!

In my own plain, drab, commercial yarn knitting news, I am over halfway through the second sleeve on Lee's cardigan. I'd probably get it finished if I didn't have choir rehearsal tonight. Also, today I hope to grab Mrs. Tina Taylor AKA ChemicalPink and go look at the Gauge Knits store, which is the last stop on my "new yarn shops of Austin I never was able to go to when I had a job" tour. I rarely get to see Tina because she works night shift, so this will be fun, I hope.