Blooming Brioche KAL - Stage 3, and Done

Are you still waiting for the end of the knit-along I did last fall? The clues were released a week apart and I kept up with the knitting, but it looks like I didn't keep up with the blogging. I wrote about the swatch here and clues 1 and 2 here in case you want to get up to speed.

I really enjoyed the pattern. It was the first time I had done anything but plain brioche and this one involved a lot of multi-step increases and decreases. I certainly "stretched" my chart reading skills - there are a lot of new symbols in the charts. (But for me still a lot easier than line by line instructions - yuck!) The designer also posted video tutorials each week for new techniques.

Each stage of the knit-along built up the "blooming" theme.
Stage 0 - Preparing the Ground (swatching)
Stage 1 - Roots, Seeds, and Bulbs (cast on and first two shapes)
Stage 2 - Sprouts, Leaves, and Vines (three more designs)
Stage 3 - Stems, Buds & Petals (more designs and cast off), which you can see in progress below:

The petals are finished with a cast off that highlighted the petal shapes and continued the contrast lines of the design. This is what really drew me to the design. I would have liked to put three pins in each petal to create a rounded shape on each petal, but that would have been more pins than I own!

Even putting only one pin in each petal used most of my pins!

Blocking

I am happy with the shawl but not happy with the yarn choice. It could have been better.

The two yarns are a different weight and one is a single ply and the other is a multiply (which gives them a different "feel" and drape.) The green on the back reflects light and looks vibrant, but the red/orange on the front seems to swallow the light. I'm not looking for neon but something more luminescent would be nice.

I love the build up of the pattern from round bulbs, to stems, leaves, and buds through to full blooms.

I ran out of green on the second last row. I was eager to continue so I searched through the stash and found something very similar.

You can hardly tell the difference, but after I was done knitting the green I realized I should have used the green from my swatch. Felt a little silly for not going there first. (Reminded me of the time I searched through all my buttons to replace one on a shirt. After it was sewn on, I remembered and found the spare buttons sewn on the shirt seam. Sometimes I'm really not that bright.)

I plan to work a smaller rectangle sample of this design (when I find the right yarn :) that would be suitable to hang on a wall. We'll see how it comes out.

The shall is the size that I wanted - I made the smaller version of the pattern.

Showing the back.
The shawl isn't reversible and the back doesn't make
a very organized pattern, but it's pretty in its own way.

I mostly wear it wrapped around my neck, like so:

Part way though the winter I remembered this green pea coat (I guess it's also pea green!) I had. It was still packed away for the summer. It was the perfect partner for this shawl.

But sometimes around the house when I'm chilly, I have worn it over my shoulders too.

I can't wait to do more projects with this designer's patterns - she's brilliant. "Stacked" stitches are next for me!

Project Stats
Started: 8 Nov '18
Finished: 26 Nov '18
Pattern: Blooming Brioche KAL by Xandy Peters
Materials: DeepWater DyeWorks Lush (Aztec), 100 grams, $22, in stash since 2015; madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light (Leaf), 100 grams, $25, in stash since 2014
Ravelry project page: Blooming Brioche KAL, $7

Blooming Brioche KAL - Stages 1 and 2

Knitting has continued on the Blooming Brioche shawl. Each "stage" of the knit-along is being released on a Thursday.

It's been a lot of knitting and I am enjoying the brioche and the new-to-me techniques of decreasing and increasing stitches to create the flowing pattern on the front.

Depression has grounded me to the couch recently and sometimes I can't even knit, but a lot of the time I have been able to at least work on this project.

I decided to go with the green and red combination.

It was softer with more drape than the red and black, and my sister assured me it did not look like Christmas. BTW, I just got this comment on one of my Instagram posts: "that screams Christmas !" Hmmm....

I decided to ravel the swatch to use the yarn again. (Some people keep their swatch for reference during the project - I usually don't bother.) I'm glad I did. You can see in the picture below how much of the red bled onto the green during the soaking:

The little (lower) one is from the swatch.

I wanted a bright vibrant green in my shawl, so I set about rinsing the red yarn. It turned the water of several rinses vivid red so I tried a vinegar rinse. (Vinegar helps dyes to set.) The water came out almost clean and so did the next rinse. But the following rinse (just to be sure) was bright red again. Apparently the yarn had enough vinegar in it going into the first rinse that it still had an effect.

So I did another vinegar rinse but heated the yarn. Heat and vinegar should really do the trick. But I got the same result: rinse 1 was clear; rinse 2 had lots and lots of red in the dye. I was out of ideas but still wanted to use the yarn, so I decided I will just have to always rinse the shawl in vinegar water. How's that for cutting the Gordian knot?

The designer (Xandy Peters) has organized the pattern into different sections within each stage. The first was the "roots", i.e. the cast on:

It's a simple but brilliant cast on that gives a completely smooth beginning to the pattern -- a bunch of stitches coming from one point. The red is bordered by a green selvage all the way around. It really is great.

Next was short section of seeds:

And then the bulbs. Here I have the first repeat of the bulbs done:

The back, if you're curious:

Although the back is neat and has an interesting pattern of its own, the shawl is not reversible in the sense that the front and the back are the same.

And now all three repeats of the bulbs are finished:

I'm making the smaller version of the shawl, or I would have had more bulb repeats to do.

That was the end of Stage 1. I finished it the day that Stage 2 was released so I was not feeling very much behind the knit-along.

The first section of Stage 2 was the sprouts. You can just see the first leaf shapes in the picture below:

Here the sprouts and the next section of leaves are done:

And finally the "vines" are done as well and that is the end of Stage 2:

I've had to tink back several times as I missed some part of the pattern. Once time I took back a couple rows for something I thought was a mistake. I realized it wasn't a mistake but I had missed something on the following row so all my tinking was not a waste.

There are parts of the pattern done on the wrong side and it was a real exercise of trust to just follow the chart stitch by stitch without being able to see the pattern on the front. One of the reasons I like using charts is that you can see the pattern or design develop and can see how the row I'm doing builds on and fits with the previous rows. I couldn't do that from the wrong side in brioche and found myself often peaking over to the other side to make sure things were "ok". I did get a little better at working from the wrong side as I went.

The shawl is definitely growing in size. The stitches fill up my 40" needle cable and the shawl makes a half circle shape:

In the next pic you can see the various stages of the pattern and how they each develop from the previous:

I'd like to knit a rectangle shape from this pattern at some point because I think it shows the development of the pattern more clearly than the half circle shape. That is what I really love about the pattern.

Stage 3 is to be released tomorrow. (Yes, even though it's Thanksgiving!) I am ready. :)

Blooming Brioche KAL - the Swatch

A couple months ago I started following the amazing designer Xandy Peters on Instagram (of Fox Paws fame, if that means anything to you) and when this picture came up:

Repost @xandypeters

I knew I was going to make it. I didn't even know for sure what kind of garment or object this detail was a part of, but I was immediately convinced that I was going to go along with the knit-along she mentions in the post.

Since then, I have seen the full shawl that this is a part of. Xandy announced the knit-along a few weeks ago and I jumped on board.

When you bought the pattern, you got general information about the shawl and what yarn you would need. I went stash diving and pulled out anything that might be suitable.

I didn't find anything that I loved right away but I whittled it down to workable options. When the instructions for the swatching came out this week, I tried two options:

It's the same orangey-red with a green and with a black. I also used the swatches to compare two methods of doing brioche. The green one was done the traditional way where you work with one colour at a time, meaning each row is worked twice--once with colour A and once with colour B. The black was done with the "one-pass" method where you work with both colours as you go down the row so you only work each row once.

I'm not sure if the difference in the length of the two swatches is because of the brioche method or the difference in the yarns, but you can see it is significant. Each swatch was worked the same number of rows, but the green one is much longer. The black swatch was done with fewer stitches (don't ask), but it is just as wide. I'm going to let the swatches relax a few days before I measure gauge and compare them more thoroughly.

In the meantime, here is a picture of each against a white background:

And here is a picture of each of them held up so you can see how airy or lacy they are:

The green one has a lighter look to it (more holes) and in fact feels lighter in my hand too. It also feels smoother as the black yarn itself is much coarser.

I have until Thursday to decide because that is when the next step is released.