Vampires and Vampyres

Oh October! It's a busy month, but lots of fun too; my favorite time of the year.

I was spoiled on the third with birthday gifts of a yarny nature (natch), we hosted a Thanksgiving family dinner last weekend and today is my parent's 66th Anniversary! I can't believe Halloween is only two weeks away...

Speaking of which, my latest knitting project has a goulish connection: it's called the "Vampyre Shawl" because of the cool bat-like shape. I sent away to Germany for special rainbow wool just for this project; that has a very long, smooth transition between colours. I had never ordered yarn online before, but it was so cheap and quick, I am sure it won't be my last! It came in a huge skein; I separated it into balls of one complete rainbow each and got almost three individual balls and began on one "wing" of the pattern:

I learned a new technique on Craftsy.com called "short rows" in order to get the curved effect:

Because I wanted to have the wings match, instead of continuing to follow the pattern straight through to the right wing, I cast off on scrap yarn so I could begin again at the tip of the other side. However, I had to make sure it would curve the correct way, so I reversed all the knits to purls and purls to knits from the left wing and it worked! Six attempts later, I was able to match up the colours (since the transition zones are so long, it was difficult to determine exactly where to begin). After completing the right wing, I watched a YouTube video to show me how to attach two sides of live stitches so they looked knitted together.

Once it was blocked, the shape and colours really ended up turning out beautifully. Even the pattern's designer was impressed and asked to post my project to their Facebook page!

Speaking of transitions and vampires, now I really need to replace my Thanksgiving decor with some spooky Halloween trappings!