Two Purple Shawls

I am behind with posting again. Life has been just too busy lately. I have been chauffeuring my kids to and from school and picking them up for lunch every day. Since they go to different schools with different schedules, the constant driving has been taking over my schedule. My daughter's school bus has been cancelled this year due to a school bus driver shortage and her school is a bit of a drive from our house. My son's school is a lot closer to us but on the bottom of a very steep hill, which makes that mile feel a lot longer when walking back up home. In addition, I have been concerned about them eating inside of their crowded school cafeterias, while the level of COVID-19 transmission has been so high in our community and their schools not giving them the option to eat their lunches outside. So my husband and I have been checking them out of school for lunch, having them eat in our cars, and then checking them back in. On most days their lunch recesses overlap and I need my husband to help. But there are days, when I have to drive to both schools three times. It is exhausting and I can barely wait for this pandemic to be over! However, I also feel very fortunate that I am able to do this for them and that none of us have contracted COVID-19 so far. Furthermore, I can use the time, while I am waiting for them or they are eating their lunches in my car, to knit. And I have been knitting.

One of the items I made is a shawlette with a beautiful border knitted sideways with Knit Picks Stroll in the color Dazzlepants. I followed Tetiana Otruta's pattern From Dawn Till Dusk but added 1 additional repeat of Charts C and E and 2 extra repeats of Chart D to it. The yarn feels very nice; however, I was hoping for a more gradual transition of the different shades of purple. Also, I planned the medium purple to be centered on the shawlette but ran out of yarn, as the light purple section was a lot shorter than the darker shades. It was my mistake to assume that each shade of purple yarn was the same length. So I reknitted the shawlette with half of it being the dark purple and the other half the 2 lighter shades.  I think it turned out really nice.

For the other purple shawl I used Knit Picks Muse, a hand painted yarn in aran weight. I bought 2 skeins each of the colors Exquisite (black) and Poetic (purple) a long time ago but never knew what to make of them. To be correct, I did knit a hat and cowl combo with a stranded pattern once but didn't like it and unraveled it. Then I used the yarn for a textured striped shawl, which I also unraveled. I loved the color combination, but somehow the black always looked "dirty" next to the purple. So I decided to knit something very simple using both colors but somehow separated. I was inspired by Veronica O'Neils's Two-Face shawl and her pattern gave me the idea to create this half black-half purple shawl. It is a basic triangle shawl knitted in reverse stockinette stitch, while switching the two colors at the center, with a garter stitch border, where the colors are alternated every other row. I used large (8mm) knitting needles, so the shawl feels very light with a nice drape, despite of the thickness of the yarn. It also feels wonderfully soft and warm.