I love sunrises and sunsets.

I’d always imagined a gradient shawl that could convey this image.
This project actually goes back to being planned from the day I went to Maryland Sheep and Wool festival 2007 and decided to learn how to spin. I saw a way to actually create the shawl I imagined by picking out specific colors and spinning together.

Though I never actually found the colors over the years until 2014 when Steph of Loop! posted a Bullseye with sparkle bump that was exactly what I imagined.
I immediately jumped into the spinning without any planning, testing, or swatching. First mistake.
After spinning half the bump, I realized that I wasn’t spinning fine enough to ensure that I would have enough yarn to Navajo ply and make a full size shawl. So after weeks of spinning the beautiful singles, I spent months contemplating what to do.

In the end, I opted to do what I did for the Bamboo Multnoma Shawl that I made back in 2011.  I plied it with metallic thread.

Looking in my metallic thread stash, I had some nice gold and some rich red. So I proceeded to ply the yellow through orange with gold and the read through burgundy with red thread.

Of course this created a boucle like yarn since the thread is finer and there was nothing else in the mix to balance the yarn. Regardless, I plowed ahead because I was in love with that wound up yarn ball! I kept imagining what it would be like.

So October of 2014, I packed it in my suitcase on the way to our cruise in the Mediterranean and away we went – without a pattern and limited internet access. 🙁 (Second mistake)

But I was so excited! 2 whole weeks of cruising and a shawl to knit! So I pulled out my yarn and needles and just cast on the same way I had for the Multnomah and realizing how textured the yarn was that perhaps lace wouldn’t work. So for 2 weeks I worked on a top down triangular shawl in garter stitch. Still quite disappointed with my spinning, I kept going anyway because hey! it’s vacation knitting after all.

When I returned from the trip, I thought well, maybe I should include a few rows of garter lace once in a while. So I pulled out Myrna Steadman’s book and decided to do some lace. While looking at the book, I realized that I didn’t really want a triangle, it wouldn’t be like a sunrise, I wanted a circle and oh, BTW, Faroese shawls are more round, so I began moving the central YOs to be 20 stitch apart and started a diamond lace stitch.  (Third mistake, I probably should have frogged by now)

After doing the lace stitch for a while (now Dec 2014) I gave up on it.  Too much concentration, so I switched back to garter stitch and put it away for a long time.

After recovering from ankle surgery, I picked up knitting again, and I got back to this shawl.  I very quickly got board of knitting garter stitch and decided to create a lace pattern that were like “sun rays” and that’s how the last lace pattern came about.

Then by April 2016, I was getting dangerously close to running out of yarn and decided to start the edging.  A classic Estonian knit on edging seemed perfect to end the sun rays.  When the length of the edging was long enough, I skipped the rest of the rich pink and went right to the burgundy for a double stranded stretchy bind off.

Then here it is in it’s final blocking and done!