Back in August last year I attended In the Loop, a conference in Glasgow.  Besides enjoying the conference itself, it was also lovely to catch up with some friends of mine from the knitting world, including Karie Westermann, a Danish born designer now living in Glasgow.

We had, for a while, been talking around a collaborating on a design combining her talents as a designer, and my yarn.  At In the Loop she had a good chance to pick and choose some colours and decide on a base for her design.

And the result is Frances Herself which forms part of Karie's "Authors and Artists" series of designs.

[caption id="attachment_8586" align="aligncenter" width="800"]Photograph Copyright David Fraser Photograph Copyright David Fraser[/caption]

You can read all about Frances Herself on Karie's website, so instead I'll tell you a bit about the yarn Karie chose to use for her design.  The Quinag base is a 4ply (fingering) base which contains 100% Bluefaced Leicester wool.  We tried putting together many colour combinations, but the colours she eventually settled on were Assynt Peat (a bluish charcoal grey), Jewelled (a bright pink/purple combination) and Stormy Seas (a turqouise/blue combination).

But ..... as Stevan (aka Mr RC) is so fond of saying, the world is your mollusc when it comes to choosing colour combinations.  Here are a few I threw together today just to give you some ideas:

Perhaps you want monochrome (Assynt Peat and Moonshine) with just a splash of colour (Turquoise Delight)

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Or else perhaps you want to be very bold, and with spring just around the corner add loads of colour, using Assynt Peat as your base, A Slice of Lime to add zing, and Jewelled to add pizazz!

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Or .... thinking about spring again, perhaps you want to have softer, more subtle shades, this time in Canisp which is a suitable alternative to the Quinag base which Karie used.  Here we have Rose Quartz, Almost Cloudless Skies (not yet up on the website) and Silvery Moon:

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And also in Canisp a slightly bolder combination - Almost Cloudless Skies, Silvery Moon and Winter Flames.

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I've not quite decided myself which colours I'll use for my version, but I need to get a wriggle on as I want to have it finished for Edinburgh Yarn Festival.

I hope to have a few colour combinations made up into kits for Edinburgh Yarn Festival next month, but I also hope to see some of you wearing your own version of the very lovely shawl which Karie has designed.    And please make sure you visit Karie's blog to read more of the story behind the design and the name.

Many thanks, Karie, for such a lovely design, and David for allowing me to use his beautiful photographs of Karie wearing the design.

[caption id="attachment_8596" align="aligncenter" width="800"]Photograph Copyright David Fraser Photograph Copyright David Fraser[/caption]