I haven't blogged about it while I was working on it, because ... well, I totally forgot!
Mad Blood was inspired by the dramatic beauty of a local yarn: The Mad Blood Stirreth, dyed by Tash of Knitsch Sock fame. It's a gorgeous blue based ruby red with just a hint of pink. When I saw it I knew I had to do something dramatic with it - so I did. The shawl Mad Blood positively drips with lace, cables, beads (optional of course), and nupps. If you like your lace challenging, then this shawl will keep your attention as the lace motifs are worked on both right and wrong side rows.
If you're like me and you get bored easily, fear not - the lace and cable motifs are constantly changing - you are never asked to repeat a series of rows.
The development of this shawl took a while - I have many swatches as I worked out the pattern motifs. In a future post I will show you my rather frumpy looking knitted doodle swatches so you can see how I get from A to B.
This pink-red colour seems to be a challenging colour for digital cameras. We had an extremely difficult time trying to capture both the colour AND the pattern, and in the end the photos are a compromise between trying to achieve the illustration of both.
Ironically, my favourite photo is taken in a grubby mirror in a gloomy room with the shawl pinned to my leg. If you click on the photo you will be able to see the pin!
