MoonDance

I don’t often post about my knitting projects here, but today seemed like a good opportunity to make an exception. After all, the prompt is “circle” and I have a project that was knit in the round, thus creating a circle.

This is my own design, one that was created for my local yarn shop, Mockingbird Moon. It’s a cowl with matching fingerless mitts using a truly fun — and high quality — yarn my LYS stocked up on this fall called “Dyed in the Wool” by SpinCycle. Loralee, who owns the shop, needed a pattern for the statewide yarn crawl coming up in October, and wanted to feature this yarn.

I played around with various designs using yarn from my stash (for those not familiar with yarn terminology, “stash” is leftover yarn from finished projects or yarn you’ve purchased believing the right project will come along someday — the former is what makes up my stash). Here’s what some of those samples looked like:

I took those samples in to Loralee, who decided on one and gave me some yarn from the store to knit up a sample cowl, both the Dyed in the Wool and a yarn named Alegria by Manos del Uruguary. Once I finished it, we realized there was plenty left over to make some mitts, so using the same basic design, I created a pattern for those and knit them up.

After displaying the cowl and mitts in the store, where it received a really good response, we learned that even though the original cowl is a full 24″ around, some people feared it would be too tight. It was easy enough to adjust the pattern to make a longer cowl, so the pattern now has two sizes.

I really wanted the “right” pictures for this project. Loralee’s daughter Lydia seemed like a good choice for a model, unfortunately, she wasn’t available. So we thought one of the shop’s regulars, Heather, would be perfect. As it turns out, Heather’s niece, Kaylan, enjoys this sort of thing (and Heather doesn’t), and as you can see, she was the ideal model. Heather’s mom and Kaylan’s grandmother is my friend Yvonne, and I have to thank all three of them for their support with this project.

After writing out an initial draft of the pattern, I needed some test knitters, and three women graciously volunteered to knit a set and give me their feedback. Fortunately, the pattern didn’t need too much revision.

The cowl requires two yarns, and in addition to the Dyed in the Wool, one of the yarns used by test knitter Maureen was locally-spun and dyed, in a color named “ColPat.” The color was given that name in honor of her son, Cole Patrick, who committed suicide several years ago. My LYS has taken on suicide prevention for fundraising, and proceeds from the sale of the ColPat yarn will go to that cause. It’s selling well.

The design looks like it uses stranded, sometimes called Fair Isle, knitting, but it doesn’t. Instead, there are slipped stitches, which create the two-color effect. The cable is a really fun dropped-stitch version, which can have a lace effect with certain yarns, or a more textured effect with others.

The pattern, which I named MoonDance, is available for sale on Ravelry.com, a social media site for knitters, crocheters and weavers. If you dabble in any of those arts and haven’t checked out Ravelry yet, do so now!!

I’m really pleased with the final result, as is Loralee. I don’t do a lot of designing, but when I do, there’s a great deal of satisfaction.

If you’re a knitter looking for your next project, I invite you to take a look at this pattern! Another yarn that would work well with it is Lorna Lace’s Shepherd Sport, which comes in numerous variegated colorways. That’s the yarn I used in the sample on the left above. They also have solids in the same yarn, which would coordinate well.

One note about the Lorna’s Laces variegated yarn: the color repeats are shorter, so the effect would be very different from the Dyed in the Wool. You can see that difference in the sample.

Thanks to everyone who helped me with this pattern!!