Candle Winners & Singing Soy Praises

I decided to pick two winners in the raspberry soy candle giveaway since there were so many comments and I wanted to give everyone better odds. Congrats to the 27th & 50th commenter Stacy and Tami!

I’m working my way through your websites and having a blast discovering all the amazing crafting and family blogs out there. Thanks so much for participating and for giving me the opportunity to discover you! 🙂

Since I’m so candle crazy and I can’t just give them all away, I have decided to open an online store to sell my handmade soy candles. It will simply be called Sandra’s Soy Candles and I will let you know when it’s up and ready.

If you haven’t guessed I’m sold on soy and love it so sure you will too. Soy burns longer, is biodegradable, water soluble (less messy!), little to no soot and petroleum free. It’s going to be a lot of fun and I will also sell some candle holders I create out of recycled items.

Generally I like knitting patterns where I feel like you can use whatever yarn you have (because my stash is big enough and I want to use it, thanks) and make a successful project. This is one of those times when a special yarn makes the process that much easier.

The Floral Bouquet Shawl from Xandy Peters uses a specific extended color pooling yarn from Feisty Fibers, which allows you to place the bobble flowers with increasing frequency as you knit the project.

It starts with a solid color yarn, then the two color yarn is added in, and you make a bobble whenever you encounter the color pops. This would be hard to replicate with other yarn that doesn’t have the extended color pooling built in.

The background of the shawl is ribbed, making the project reversible.

The shawl uses fingering/sock yarn and comes out to be an asymmetrical triangle that’s 54 inches/137 cm long and 36 inches/ 90 cm deep and 60 inches/150 cm across the top edge.

Xandy says the pattern is for intermediate to advanced knitters. Knowing how to work traditional bobbles would probably help, but there’s a great video tutorial for how to work the floral bobbles so you can practice on other yarn or even incorporate the bobbles into other projects.

The bobbles are five-petaled flowers but they also kind of look like starfish to me, which could be fun on a child’s cardigan or other pattern. They’d also be fun on the leg of a sock or around the brim of a hat for extra whimsy.

The pattern includes photo and video tutorials, and written and charted instructions. It also includes tips on what to look for if you choose to use different yarn for the project, and instructions on how to dye your own yarn to use in the project.

If you want to give it a try, you can find the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Xandy Peters]

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