Blazing in Gold, Drenching in Purple

Blazing in gold and drenching in purple... Emily Dickinson uses these luscious words to describe the setting sun.

I've used the prolific purple petals of our tulip tree as a backdrop for knitting projects before; perhaps Miss Dickinson wouldn't mind my using her poetry to describe the Citron Shawl nestled in these tree branches.

The Citron pattern, designed by Hillary Smith Callis, is free on Knitty.  It's the first real shawl pattern I've ever tried - other things I've called shawls are really more like wraps, long and rectangular.  Citron will be more like a crescent shape when it is finished, so that the straight edge wraps around the neck and the rounded edge drapes over the shoulders.  You could also scrunch it up a little and wear it as a scarf.  To start, you cast on three stitches; the last row will have more than five hundred!  The pattern rows all involve either increasing or decreasing; the ruched sections have double the number of stitches as the flat sections.  That is a lot, a lot, a lot of stitches.

I made one little error design modification and have fewer flat rows between the ruched sections.  I may add an additional section of ruching for a total of six (the pattern calls for five), just to make sure the finished piece is long enough from end to end.

I found the yarn on deep discount at Tuesday Morning.  It is Inca Sportlace, spun in Turkey from wool and polyamide, and hand-painted by local artisans in South America.  I can't find anything about it on-line, except for picture of things other Tuesday Morning shoppers have knitted, so either this must be a really incredible too-good-to-advertise yarn or really awful.  It probably is a little too scratchy to wear against bare skin, but perfectly cozy if you're wearing something with a collar and sleeves.  Maybe it will soften with washing.  And love the way the hues of gold change from darker to lighter every here and there.

This shawl will be donated to the silent auction at this year's Bishop's Barbeque, a fundraiser for Gray Center.  I like the pattern enough to do it again, though, and wouldn't mind having my own Citron next fall!