Yay! Dancette!

Fresh off my needles is a fun knit from Irishgirlieknits. I saw Carrie's design, Dancette, featured on her blog and fell in love with the striping and chevron goodness displayed in this beautiful shawl. Then, after reading rave reviews about the lovely hand dyed yarn from The Plucky Knitter, I decided that I just had to order one of her Living A Mystery yarn kits that was equipped with 2 skeins of The Plucky Knitter Primo MCN 75/20/5 and the pattern. The skeins are selected by The Plucky Knitter herself and shipped off to you. As far as I know, you don't have any say in the matter.

And that makes project that much more fun.

I poured over the FO gallery for Dancette for days after I placed the order, wondering if my skeins would be similar to the projects that I was viewing. I am a huge fan of blue, so I was imagining opening the box and finding a beautiful shade of blue and another beautiful skein, maybe grey? (Well, let's face it, I was fixated on the blue.) Then the box arrived and inside was this:

No blue? What? I was taken aback a bit. This was not what I was expecting. Red and brown? Really? I mean I knew it was a "mystery" box of yarn, but somehow I thought that I would get what I had been dreaming about. Hmmmm......

Now I don't usually choose red when choosing yarn, clothes, etc., so this was new for me. I carried the skeins around the house with me for a bit, and then I put them down so I could think a bit about the whole thing.

Then I grabbed my long lost blue sweater in progress to try to finish it up. The sweater took me about 10 days to finish, and after that sea of blue had held my attention for that amount of time, enough was enough. I was so ready for a change.

I saw The Plucky Knitter skeins on the table where I had left them, and I had a new attitude. I thought to myself, "This isn't a bad thing after all." I wound the yarn into skeins and got down to business.

I decided to use the red as the main color with the brown as the complementary color. I cast on in the red and started on the pattern. The color changes were so fun, and the varying width between stripes really kept things interesting. As I watched the shawl get bigger, I was liking it more and more. By the time, I reached the chevron edging, I was couldn't wait for the finished object.

And here it is:

I really love how it turned out, and what I've come to appreciate about this project is that it has broadened my color horizons. I am looking forward to thinking outside the blue box for future projects. Who knows? Maybe I'll even branch out to a mustard cowl or pumpkin colored sweater.

That's begs the question: What am I going to knit next?