Oh, the joy of creating your own patterns – Kingsroad

Thought it’d be interesting to share a bit of the creative process – and what comes along with it. So here goes a ramble. Of sorts. Enjoy ;)

I’d been wanting to try and get my hands on some Crazy Zauberballs for quite some time when the idea for Kingsroad popped in my mind. So many colors, all wrapped in one –fairly cheap – ball, that was very tempting to my tasteless, cheap self XD

Now, here’s the thing with me: as disputable as my tastes can be (if you think we Frenchies are elegance incarnate, think again) even I have my limits. And as much as I love that idea of long color changing yarn, I often find garments knitted in these un-wearable. I don’t know. They seem unnatural to me, if that means anything. Kinda fake. Gadget-y. They can look good - as objects. Decorative things. Not practical things. But that’s just me being weird. I’m aware. Don’t worry.

Anyway, back to creating Kingsroad. A while ago, I have found out that the only way for me to safely use long color changing yarn (i.e. make something I’ll actually wear) is to crochet it. Preferably in stripes. With another long color changing yarn – see the inconsistence of my reasoning there? One color changing yarn, knitted: looks sketchy. Two or more, crocheted: totally fine. Because that makes sense.

And as if this wasn’t enough, when I was purchasing Schoppel-Wolle goodness, I saw my usual yarn shop was selling Kunstgarn – very colorful yarn, cheaper than the Zauberballs. So I got curious about those, too. And decided to use FOUR different variegated yarns for my crocheted stole – go big or go home, right?

The yarn arrived (No decent LYS where I live. Gotta order almost everything.), an avalanche of colors grazed my delicate eyes, and I got working.

And guess what?

The four colorways worked wonders together – kinda surprising since I picked two different brands of yarn. Got those four bad boys for a little less than 40 euros total – quite the bargain for so many vibrant colors, if you ask me.

Yes, the result is freakishly gaudy – and yes, I LOVE it. Again, it’s not as if I was known for my tame sense of style.

Exhibit A: Elegance incarnate, I tell you.

Another good thing: both the Crazy Zauberball and the Kunstgarn are what you’d call sock yarns - 75/25. So no pilling. Which is always a plus.

The stole is soft enough – I wore it all winter and didn’t find it scratchy. It is pretty heavy, though, but I quickly got used to it. When you make a stole with 400g of yarn, you’ve got to be realistic: the damned thing is gonna be heavy – 400 grams heavy, to be exact.

Anyway, I love my Kingsroad to bits. And probably will try to come up with another crochet stole pattern someday soon, just to have an excuse to use those yarns again.

But my little story doesn’t end here.

From the start, Kingsroad was meant to be a pattern that I would sell. But it wasn’t meant to be customizable. I only realized that it would be perfectly possible to write it as a customizable pattern when I first started to chart the stripes.

And possible it was. Possible, but nightmarish to work out. Seriously. I hadn’t expected the thing to be so difficult to write/chart. Make one little modification to one tiny bit of instruction, have the whole thing crumble down before your eyes, basically. Or worse. Make on little modification to one tiny bit of instruction, DON’T notice the whole thing crashing down before you, keep working for hours, make fancy charts, formatting, proofread and THEN notice something is not quite right. Yes. That happened. Quite a few times. But hey, that was fun, all things considered. And educational. I mean, now I can proudly say that I did it. I can boast and say that I’m able to make a customizable pattern. AND I made my own set of custom brushes for charting crochet patterns. I didn’t have the choice. It was either do that, or go bonkers -oh, the joy of having a terrible handwriting. Anyway, creating those brushes took quite a lot of time, but now that they’re done, the whole charting process has become much easier for me.

So I now have a gorgeous stole, a brand new pattern, bragging rights and handy custom brushes. How nice is that? Very nice indeed.

Although… as I write this, this pattern I’m so proud of hasn’t been tested yet.

…dammit.

Kingsroad - Custom Macramé & Braids Fringe

So, you've crochetted your Kingsroad and want the fringes of your stole/scarf to look like this:

Then read on and (re)discover the joy of knotting :p

Ideally, to work the macramé and braids fringe you should have a number of strands that's a multiple of 12 (since you need a mulitiple of both 4 (for the macramé) and 3 (for the braids)).
Of course, counting strands can be tedious, especially across a wide stole on which you have already spent many hours of your time. A stole that you're eager to wear. A stole that you may or may not have had enough of (hello, supersized stole lovers ;p). I know I couldn't be bothered to count strands at that point. Call me lazy - I am. So I took the easy route.
I didn't count. And when I ended up with 5 strands for the last square knot, I worked the excess strand together with another. Same goes for the last braid. As long as your yarn is not too thick, this won't be noticeable.

Here's how to work a basic square knot in macramé:

To make a square knot, you need 4 strands of yarn (those are called cords in actual macramé projects).
B and C are your core cords: they will not 'move' as you make this knot.

Step 1: Pass A over B and C and under D.

Step 2: Bring D under C and B and over A through the loop that A forms with B.

Step 3: Pass A over C and B and under D.

Step 4: Bring D under B and C and over A through the loop that A forms with C.

Lastly pull on cords A and D to tighten the knot.

Now, the actual fringe 'how-to':

Work square knots across the whole fringe (that's row 1).
Then work alternating square knots for Row 2 & 3

On Row 2, D and A become your core cords. Your working cords are now C and B.
Work Row 3 the same way you did row 1.

After these three rows of macramé, braid the strands together.

Once you're done knotting and braiding, you'll probably want to block the macramé section to open up the net-like fabric.

You should end up with something like this (note that I wore this stole all winter, meaning that more than six months have passed between the above and the below picture - the macramé still looks pretty good, I think ^^)

Don't hesitate to trim the ends after you' re done. I had planned to do so, but I actually liked the 'raggedy' look of the braids (see picture above - these do look better in the 'flesh', I assure you).

And... that's all there is to it. Happy knotting!

Kingsroad - Customizable Crochet Stole inspired by 'A Song of Ice & Fire'

Kingsroad was born when I was reading G.R.R. Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’.

At the time I had just created the base of the ‘wayn wheel’ pattern for another project. The more I looked at those wheels, the more I thought that, with just a bit of tweaking, they would make for a pretty nice scarf/stole.

Since this pattern is worked sideways, I figured it could look interesting with long color changing yarn. The result would be unexpected – just as the Kingsroad (or any road, for that matter) can be full of surprises. Additionally, working with slow color changing yarn assures a dramatic result without having to buy a dozen different colorways…

And since the pattern was to be worked in separate stripes that would then be assembled, making this a customizable stole seemed logical to me.

Thus, the Kingsroad stole was born.

Now, obviously, with such a gaudy color scheme, it is unlikely this sample Kingsroad stole would ever be seen on an episode of Game of Thrones, but it’s okay. That wasn’t what I was aiming for.

Who knows, maybe you won’t be as tasteless as I was in your choice of colors, and make a stole the ladies of Westeros would wear.

[I will update this post with the links to the Ravelry project page & shop page as soon as I create them ;)]