Two days after my last post, our world seemed to fall apart for my family. I’m not going to go into details, but due to good old office politics and a psychotic new boss, we lost our main income. I was not able to knit or spin without feeling ill to my stomach, but thankfully that is all past history now. After two months of uncertainty and no income (thank goodness we are frugal and had some savings to rely on!), Spurg has a new job, nearly no stress, and get this.. he now works in a fiber arts job! (yes, that is me that you hear laughing at the sweet irony.) He is still a graphic designer, but now working for a digitizing company making designs for silk screening shirts and embroidery designs for hats and clothing. Of course I tease him about this, he has taken my hobby for a career!

The full sized secret project has not progressed. In the next few weeks though, I will be picking it back up and finishing it. However, I am not going to make you wait until then for the pattern. That’s right, the pattern is available right now, for free and the link to the PDF file is at the bottom of this post! (I will also be uploading it to Ravelry for those of you who would like to store it in your library there.)

I began working on this during Mystery Stole 3/Swan Lake of last year. I could visualize what I wanted to create and it took many attempts to work out the charts, only because I had a little problem with my brain working. Finally, after taking a break and then working on a small doily version, the charts and written pattern fell into place.

I have used lace weight yarn for the small shoulder shawl in the pattern, but really, you would use any size needles and any weight yarn for this. It is not gauge dependent and really is more about how lacy or dense you would like your version to come out. Make a small doily with less repeats, or use a heavier weight yarn to create a thicker shawl or throw blanket for the cooler month ahead. In any case, I hope that you will enjoy this pattern and I would love to see the finished project if you choose to knit this!

I used 2 hanks of Handpainted Yarn’s lace singles in Cielos Brilliantes. This measures 48 inches across, but easily can be made larger or smaller depending on how many repeats of the second chart you chose to do, or what weight yarn and needle size you chose to create with.

The smaller sample was made with Brown Sheep’s Cotton Fine on US size 3 needles.

Close up of the Ocean Waves edging that I slightly modified to create a raised line between the body of the shawl and the edging.

Quick View of shawl posed with out a model, but with a sparkly pin!

Download Maelstrom!!!

Errata for Maelstrom – For pdf versions downloaded before September 3, 2008

Errata for Maelstrom written Chart B – For PDF versions downloaded before May 29, 2009

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