All black! Yes, I love black, which may come as a surprise to you as most of my designs are very colourful. Just look at my Etsy or Ravelry shop and you'll see the most colourful palettes. But for this shawl design I'm envisioning, I've selected black because I usually only wear black and I want to wear it myself (and as you can see in the pic, I've already chosen the accessories to go with it!).
Designing a large piece like a shawl is a bit out of my comfort zone, but at the same time I'm also looking forward to making it. I will share the pattern here on my blog!
The yarn that's just perfect for this project is Scheepjes Whirlette, Whirl's little sister in single colours. I think I can assume that quite a few of you are already familiar with Scheepjes Whirl, the gorgeous variegated yarn cakes so very popular for shawls. Whirlette was made as a uni colour companion and since I've seen very few projects made in Whirlette only, I thought let's use this yarn for my design (see below for more yarn info).


I'm also featuring another Whirlette colour - Grappa - because I may just make a second shawl because I'm thinking two different sizes would be fun and a shawl would of course make a lovely gift..... Perhaps you're wondering why there's a teapot in the picture...... I really want this shawl to be a relaxing project, one without a lot of counting and for me tea equals relaxing. So I'm all set and I will show you some progress shots next week.

Whirlette info
The Whirlette cakes are 60% cotton and 40% acrylic, which makes for a wonderful breathable fabric and thus very suitable for wraps, shawls, scarves and garments like cardigans. The 100g balls have 455 metres of soft and supple yarn and a 3.5mm crochet hook is perfect for it. And there are 19 shades!

This post is part of the blog hop we - the Scheepjes bloggers - have organized to show off the yarn we were asked to co-develop with Scheepjes...... or in other words: Whoo-hoo, I've got my own yarn with my name on the band!!!

How fab is that? In case you're wondering, let me tell you how this all came about.
A little over a year ago during our annual Bloggers Days, we were asked to do an assignment that was stamped Top Secret. Each of us had to select 6 colours that were to form our own personal yarn shade for a newly developed yarn. We also got to pick the name for this yarn. That's the brief version; I'd love to tell you a bit more on what this all meant to us and to me.

Our Yarn and TheCurioCraftsRoom Colourway

Picture this: A beautiful restaurant at the edge of a lake somewhere in the northern part of The Netherlands on a cold November day just a few weeks before Christmas 2016. A large box full of paint chip cards is emptied onto a large table and we are asked to create our own personal colour combination - consisting of 6 different shades - for a new variegated yarn especially developed for us as a group. The mood was already festive with the restaurant's abundant Christmas decorations and of course us being very happy to be together - most of us only get to see one another once a year since we live on different continents - but you can imagine that this announcement topped everything. So we got to work with scissors and tape.


Unsurprisingly, I guess :-), I went for a peacocky palette, this being the chance to have all my favourite colours combined in one ball. I chose two shades of green, three shades of blue and added some purple although strictly speaking purple is not a peacock colour (though you can detect some purple in the peacock eye in the centre of the feather depending on light and angle). Purple has always been my favourite colour so I felt I needed a bit of that in my personal ball of yarn.


As you can see from the pictures, there's a lot of colour variation in the yarn. The samples I made show the darker range of shades while to close up shows the lighter ones.

After a few hours of selecting colours and arranging and rearranging colour orders, all of us had created beautiful colour combinations: over a dozen personal palettes for a new yarn yet to be named.


Find Your Tribe, Love Them Hard
Thus, we were asked to suggest names for this new yarn and almost immediately the word TRIBE came up. We form a very tight-knit group that stay in contact every day. We are all entrepreneurs and that can be very demanding and stressful sometimes so we need one another to stay sane and most of all we need one another to share the joys of creating. So the yarn was baptized OUR TRIBE because we were so lucky to find and cement a creative and uplifting tribe.....and here we are! These head shots were taken last September during another Bloggers' Weekend.

Yarn details
Let me round off with some (technical) yarn details. Our Tribe is a variegated yarn that is beautifully twined, which creates a dappled effect and thus the idea that there are even more than 6 different colours. The more the colours contrast, the more dappled the effect. It's super soft and works up very smoothly and quickly. It consists of 70% Merino Superwash and 30% Polyamide and comes in 100g (420m) balls suitable for hook/needle size 2.5 to 3mm. It's machine washable at 40 degrees.
You could use the yarn to make shawls, blankets, socks, hats, gloves or wristies, to name but a few options.

Blog hop to the next shade
Tomorrow Esther from Happy in Red will show you which colour combination is her favourite in blog hop post number 11.
In case you missed yesterday's blog hop post, please visit It's all in a nutshell.
Enjoy!





Where to buy Our Tribe
UK: Wool Warehouse (international shipping)
CANADA: Knotty House
THE NETHERLANDS: Various Scheepjes' stockists
Caro's Atelier

Time to play around with colours! I've had this wonderful box filled with the cutest 10g balls for a while now. I've been looking at it regularly - as you do with such a yummy box - but now it's time to rummage and make some inspiring colour combination.

However, in case you're wondering, let me first tell you what kind of box this is. It's called the Scheepjes Catona Colour Pack and it contains one 10g ball of all 109 Catona colours. Yes, 10g....ideal for small projects or larger ones for which you need lots of colours. Each ball has 25m of mercerized cotton (sport weight) with a wonderful sheen. You can buy the entire Colour Pack box or you can buy the 10g balls individually.

I use Catona for most of my peacock designs but this box inspired me to make some non-peacocky colour selections. I went for earth tones and reds and pinks and peachy colours (aren't they all ;-) I also wanted an ombre effect and with 109 different shades that wasn't a problem at all.

Oh, and just to show you how teeny tiny the 10g balls are, here is one with its bigger sisters.

50g, 25g and 10g balls

Work in Progress for a Free Pattern
After a little doodling, I knew that I wanted to design something that could double as a festive Christmas ornament and a non-holiday related item. I'll reveal it next week and share the pattern with you. For now, it's just a little sneak peek of the first few rounds.



Where to buy the Catona Colour Pack: 109 x 10g balls
UK: Wool Warehouse: (international shipping)

Where to buy Catona 10g balls individually:
UK: Wool Warehouse: (international shipping)