Upcoming Candle Retreat at Village Craft and Candle

Village Craft and Candle is holding their annual candle retreat from Saturday, April 30 to Sunday, May 1, 2011 in St. Mary’s Ontario.

On Saturday you’ll learn how to make votives, blend colours and mix fragrances. They’ll also explore packaging ideas and soy candles. (Candle photo by Nerry Burg)

The afternoon is all about making cookies, ice cream and cinnamon bun candles. They encourage you to come just to explore this fun hobby or to help expand your candle making business.

Sunday sounds fun because they’ll be making hippie candles and hurricanes. In the afternoon you’ll get lotions, bath salts and warming foot oil. All supplies, instruction booklet, refreshments and lunch are provided.

Village Craft and Candle is my favourite Canadian place to purchase candle supplies because they have an extensive variety of products to choose from and their prices are reasonable. They’re also always very friendly and helpful if you ever have any questions.

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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