Sea Breeze Haruni

My third Haruni is ready and I am very happy and proud with it! It is intended as a present for the leader of the National Biology team, an incredible University professor and a very kind, warm and genial person. I know she wears shawls and I wanted to make something unique and beautiful for her. Haruni was almost my immediate choice as a pattern - I know it, I love it and it is easy and quick for me to knit. But the yarn? I was certain I wanted it to be hand-painted but my attempt at marbled pastels was not very pleasing for me.

Here's the finished Haruni, fresh off the needles, unblocked and in its initial colors. As I have the red Haruni I knit for Gaby a few years ago, I've positioned both on top of each other to illustrate the difference blocking makes for lace shawls. The new Haruni is knit with a bit thicker yarn (375 m / 100 g) compared to the red Cashmira Fine (500 m / 100 g) on 3.75 mm Addi lace needles, compared to 3.5 mm Addi for the red shawl and I also made two more repeats of chart A, which relates to larger charts B and C. So, though the unblocked new shawl looks the same as the blocked red Haruni, it is actually much, much larger, which was my aim (the teacher is a woman, much larger than Gaby and I wanted a shawl that would fit her comfortably).

I had about 60 g left of the yarn and I knew I wanted to change the color. I really didn't like the pale babyish tones I got from my dye job.

So I split the remaining yarn into two mini skeins and tried going into two directions - turquoise glazing or purple overdying. I made my dye solutions, then I dyed the miniskeins in a portion of the respective solution, proportionate to the weight of the miniskein to the weight of the shawl, so that if I liked the result I would know that the remaining part of the dye solution, applied in the same way to the shawl, would produce the same result.
I like both skeins, but the turquoise glazing was closer to my initial idea, preserving the purple and green undertones of the first dye job, so this is what I chose for the shawl. And I'm keeping the plum dye for another project as i really like the color of the second skein.

This is the size of the new shawl after blocking - the lace is open and it has grown significantly bigger than the red Haruni.

I LOVE the new color of the shawl - it is rich and subtle and interesting. I hope so much that the recipient will like it too.

Pattern: Haruni by Emily Ross
Yarn: Italian bobbin merino extrafine, 135 g, hand dyed
Needle: 3.75 mm Addi lace circular needles
Time to knit: 4 days