Feathering Palm Wax Flower Pillar

This is the palm pillar that I made with my daughter the other day. Palm is perfect for pillars and it looks so pretty with its sparkling patterns.

It also throws a scent very well and doesn’t require additives. In fact, if you add additives it might mess the feathering effect up.

Also, if the palm wax cools down too quickly, it might not feather either. I learned this the hard way when making votives.

This time, we warmed the mold in the oven before pouring the wax and that helped. Palm wax needs to be heated up to 200 F (93 C) and poured at about 190 F (88 C). We used a cotton wick, which seems to work well with palm pillars.

I think the last time I made palm candles, it was the summer, so the temperature wasn’t an issue. Besides that, palm is very low maintenance because you don’t need a second pour of wax and it slips out of the mold easily without any sort of mold release. Palm wax is great to work with because it’s so lovely and it burns well for a long time.

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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