No Longer a Virgin

That's right, I am not longer a Wolltraum virgin. I just finished my first project made from the oh so exquisite and awesome Wolltraum yarn. I have been stalking this yarn for ages via Facebook and Ravelry projects and so many beautiful blog posts, but I could never quite justify the cost of paying $17 - $22 a skein for yarn plus whatever it would cost to ship from the UK. A month or so ago, Wolltraum in their deviousness sent me an email announcing the release of their Halloween themed yarns. I couldn't resist any longer. They broke me finally, and it didn't even take water boarding or the removal of any fingernails. All it took was an irresistibly gorgeous colorway called "This is Halloween."

So, I ordered it and waited. Waited impatiently ... checked my email every day for a shipment update, checked my Facebook for an update, checked my PayPal account to be sure my payment wasn't cancelled ... did I mention waited IMPATIENTLY? I got my shipment notice! Yes! Oh, and then I had to wait some more for it to arrive. Anxiously, impatiently (yeah, it's a theme). And then it arrived. 

It was even prettier than the online picture. The yarn was sooo soft and delicate. The colors were super vibrant. The skeins I ordered had a 4ply, 50% cotton / 50% Acrylic make-up. Wolltraum wraps their yarn in a round cake that unfurls from the inside middle rather than the traditional skein shape. The colorway started out as a soft lemon yellow in the center and gradually transitioned to mango orange and then pink and then purple. The ingenious way the transitions were handled changing first one and then two strands and so on until the color hand changed completely alters how you think the colors will appear from just looking at the cake of yarn. The mix of yellow and orange created areas of gold and the orange and pink looked more like a soft red when it was crocheted out. The purple is so dark it looks black until you get close up.

I decided to use the yarn to make a virus shawl because I knew from the hundreds of projects I had perved on various sites, Wolltraum is a favorite yarn for those. My other reason for choosing the virus shawl pattern was that I didn't want anything that would stitch out in horizontal or vertical stripes. I wanted the transition from color to color to be as subtle as possible, and I have seen quite a few striped patterns end up with very abrupt color changes when using long run variegated yarn.

This particular type of yarn seems to be one that people either love or hate. I've read a lot of blog posts complaining about it being too thready since the individual threads are not wrapped together into a single rope like most yarns. I didn't have any problems working with it, but I could see me having more of an issue if I had decided to knit something with it instead of crochet. I may have to try that next just to see.

I absolutely love the finished product! It is full of firelight and flames. I ended up naming the finished piece Phoenix Rising because it reminded me of a phoenix rising from the ashes. I've posted the finished piece up for sale on my Pandora's Handmade Etsy page, but I think I will hold onto the second cake of yarn to make something for myself.

P.S. Each cake of yarn comes with a little metal charm. One of them had a jack-o-lantern, and the other had a skeleton bone.

Crocheted Wedding Bouquets

Working up crocheted daisies and sunflowers for two friends' wedding was how I spent the last  several months. It was time consuming and labor intensive, but I promise it was a labor of love. Seeing how everything came together at the end to form the bridesmaid and bridal bouquets made it all worthwhile.

My wife, Stephanie, was asked to be a bridesmaid in Cass and Torrey's wedding, and I was asked if I would help Cass crochet flowers for the bouquets. It was really nice to have something I could help do for the wedding. We live just under five hours away from where our friends live and where the wedding would take place, so we weren't able to participate in and help with a lot of the prep work for the wedding.

Cass and I pieced together the patterns for the daisies, buds, button flowers, and sunflowers by taking little bits from this pattern and that pattern that we liked. Cass made the button flowers and buds, I made the sunflowers, and we both worked on making the daisies.

After everything had been crocheted, stemmed, and beaded, we set aside a weekend a few weeks before the wedding to assemble everything. We ended making a trip to the craft store for silk greenery to fill out the bouquets once we started assembling them. Then, we wrapped the stems in burlap ribbon and attached cotton lace as an accent. I think they turned out beautifully! They really looked fantastic with the green bridesmaid dresses, and the bouquets will be a wonderful keepsake for each attendant.

I was particularly proud of how the sunflowers turned out. I ripped those devils apart three or four times working and reworking the petals and centers to get them just right. Then I beaded the centers to add a little shine and glitz.