Making a Bigger Summer Flies.

Happy Monday! We're seeing and hearing a lot about Summer Flies, our current KAL. The pattern knits up quickly and I know I'm not alone in saying this is one of the most fun lace shawls I've ever knit!

And while many of you are following Kathy's inspiration and using multiple skeins (or leftover bits and pieces :-) of koigu, at least a few - me included! - are using single skeins of malabrigo or kureyon sock.   Those single skeins have significantly more yardage than the koigu... malabrigo with 440 yards and kureyon with 462 yards. Which means leftovers (ugh!) or an opportunity to make the shawl bigger. I'm opting for the bigger shawl.

But how to make it bigger? This isn't a typical lace shawl with a charted pattern that you can simply repeat more times. Ravelry to the rescue! I searched the finished projects to see if someone else who'd used one of these yarns might've figured out how - and posted the details.

Here's what my search looked like.

click the photo to see it bigger - I typed the name of the yarn (in quotes) into the search field

From here I found sylverling's Christmas Flies. and then found thetanull's.  success! thetanull's project page includes all the details for adding an additional set of butterflies and ridged eyelets and adding rows to the latticework and final sections. I plan to follow her instructions for the additional butterflies, ridged eyelets and latticework, but doubt I'll do more rows in the final section before the bind off.

We'll see. I still have 73 grams of yarn left after finishing section 5!

Officially.

Yes, if you've seen the newsletter, you know it's officiall! We've chosen Summer Flies  as our next KAL, starting next Friday, May 6.

In case you haven't been in the shop lately, here are the two versions that inspired our choice, knit by our own Kathy S. Kathy said that when she read the pattern and saw it laid out in sections...she knew she had to use different colors of Koigu KPPPM. Inspired indeed!

For these two shawls, Kathy used three colors of KPPPM (and size 8 needles and she followed the pattern as written). Now she's working on a third (and it might be finished by now) that uses six. We've seen a lot of interest in the multi-colored idea, and Theresa wants to encourage everyone to try it. So she's put the KPPPM on sale - 10% off. Thanks, T!

Marci and I played around with some pairings yesterday. See how fun this is!

 

Of course, Summer Flies can be knit in just about anything - any weight, color, solid, variegated, etc. As long as it will show off lace, go for it! If you're not sure about the alternating color idea, how about a multicolor fingering weight? I have a skein of Kureyon Sock in my stash that I've been holding back for a lacy shawl.  And the Malabrigo and Madelinetosh Sock are always lovely choices for lace. You could make the shawl bigger if you choose the Kureyon or Malabrigo, since they have 440+ yards. This project on Ravelry has details for adding extra sections.

We'd love to have you join us - virtually in either our Ravelry forum or on Facebook, or in person at the shop on Friday afternoons.

edited to respond to Bonnie's comment - be sure to use version 8 of the pattern (that's the one that's linked above) - Kathy and Sally both used it and didn't find any errors.