I opened a card with knitted cables on the front and read my message from Marie. In keeping with her whole swap she wanted to give me a pattern from a New York designer. She obviously spent ages going through my favourites and she found three designers that I had favourited in the past: Melissa Wehrle and Jared Flood then she also added in Michele Wang.
Now I love these three designers and would have been happy to receive a pattern by any of them, but Jared Flood has a special place in my heart. Jared aka Brooklyn Tweed is the designer of one of the first patterns I bought from Ravelry, Porom. I knit it in December 2008. It was a lovely hat
Looking at that photo makes me all nostalgic. January 2009 is when that photo was taken and I was such a new knitter and blogger then, not to mention pretty rubbish at photography! Jared Flood's blog really inspired me back when I first saw it. He is such a great photographer and his blog was clean and simple with elegant and fun photography. I wanted to blog like Brooklyn Tweed! I later realised that I shouldn't aim to blog like anyone else. Blogging is about finding your own voice, but learning from other bloggers is definitely a wise thing to do! So I set about trying to improve my photography, which as you know is still a work in progress!
So after deciding that I really wanted a Jared Flood pattern I looked at the list of patterns that Marie gave me to choose from and narrowed my choice down to two patterns that I really love; Rock Island and Leaves of Grass. I suppose it is hardly surprising that I would choose two lace shawls as my main choices, as I have been a bit obsessed with them lately.
I have yarn for both patterns, but I decided I really wanted to try a full circular shawl using Elizabeth Zimmermann's Pi construction. The thing that cinched my choice for me was that the Leaves of Grass pattern is knit in 4 Ply to give a slightly heavier shawl, doubled over to use as a half circle, it will make it a lovely warm shawl.
I sent my request to Marie and I now have the pattern printed out and ready to go!
I have already chosen my yarn too. It's actually a 3-Ply or light fingering weight, that is 80% wool and 20% alpaca. It is a natural shade and is is pretty soft but with a nice bounce to it, which should mean it will block nicely.
I'm really excited about this yarn and pattern combination, and I probably would never have bought the pattern, and the yarn would have been used for something else. This swap has motivated me to do this (after I do my Lily's Slice of Pi Shawl KAL!)
I had so much fun working out which pattern I was going to choose. It was great of Marie to go to all that trouble of slogging her way through my favourites list. Once more, she has proved to be a fantastic swapper. I'm such a lucky blogger :-)
