fire dancer
You’re in Bar Harbor for a day trip, and in your jaunts, you find a yarn store. Woohoo! You go inside and, among other things, you find a lonely skein of Araucania Magellanes in the autumny colors you love so much. Even better yet, it’s an orphan, so it’s also half-off. You can’t resist, and it comes home with you.
Then, of course, you’re left wondering what the heck to do with this skein of (rather scratchy) yarn that isn’t really enough to do much of anything with, and – bonus! – is mostly comprised of colors that look terrible against your pale Scottish-American complexion.
So Mags hangs out in your stash for a year, and then the cheeky little bugger whispers in your ear one day: I want to be a shawl.
A shawl. Seriously, now?
I did some researching on Ravelry, and came across the Storm Cloud Shawlette; different yarn altogether, but it seemed like it might work. I didn’t know if regular garter stitch would stretch the yarn further than a dropped garter or not, so I decided to just leave it as regular garter and take my chances. I busted out the big needles and my complete lack of math skills (I was trying for a slightly different shape than Storm Cloud and didn’t quite achieve it, but… sorta?… random math for the win?) and, in a couple evenings, I had a little bitty shawl.
She measures about 39″ wide by 17″ tall, and it took a serious hardcore blocking to get to that point.
But Mags’ journey wasn’t quite over yet. I got it in my head that what this little shawl really needed was beads. Yup, beads. We will not discuss how much money I spent on beads, between a trip to the local craft stores (yes, plural) and mail-order from Fire Mountain, because the bottom line is that I was practically buried in amber-colored beads… but couldn’t figure out what the heck to do with them. I tried a couple different things, didn’t like the end result, ripped it all out. Frustrated, I tossed Mags in a box and left her there for a few weeks.
Today, I finally just accepted that Mags didn’t want beads, and the yarn, my friends, always wins.
My original inspiration was the canopies of bright autumn leaves in my beloved Maine. The end result reminds me more of something a flamenco dancer might drape around her hips, over a swirling red skirt, and so I named her Fire Dancer.
One problem remains, though, and that is that these still are not my colors… so I put her up on Etsy. May she find a loving home.
luscious:)