Burstling - the making of a pattern and yarn kit

I have collaborated with Dominique Trad a few times over the years and I really enjoy the process of each creation. So when Dom sent me a photo of a prototype pattern she was working on in February I knew I had to get involved.

The pattern is called Burstling, and it is a sister pattern to Burst - a collaboration we worked on last year. Some of you might remember that I dyed up two colour combos for it, and you can still find the kits in my shop.

Whilst Burst is knit in DK weight and a triangular shape, Burstling is in Fingering/4ply weight and a crescent shape. What I like about Burstling is that it has an easy to remember pattern repeat, the shaping is done in a way that is intuitive and organic. What’s more, there is not a single purl stitch in sight, all you need is knit, yarn over and slip stitch.

When I mentioned to Dom how easy it was to knit the shawl she let on a little secret: that she’s a lazy knitter herself, so when she’s designing something she always think about the “laziest” way to knit and factor that in all her patterns.

I can’t argue with that and thinking about all the patterns I’ve knit from Dom they really were easy knits! I made two samples from the yarns I dyed and once I have the initial pattern set up it was pretty plain sailing, which was super helpful as I was able to binge on some shows I’ve been wanting to watch and still call it work 🙃

Burstling Shawl knit in Tropical Paradise Purple combo modelled by Cat

When Dom approached me about the pattern she had a clear idea what this pattern should look like and what types of yarn would work well. We talked about the colours and the contrast, and the general feel we want for the pattern and yarn.

I did a few sample combos initially but neither of us was happy with the colour interactions - the colours worked in my head did not translate well in the knitting.

So I played some more with the colours and more sampling… eventually we settled on two combos that you see here: Tropical Paradise Purple and Tropical Paradise Pink. You can probably guess that while naming the combos we were thinking about tropical sunset, clear waters, the florals… and we may or may not have had a discussion about tropical cocktails 😆

The yarn I used is a new base called Bea, it is a blend of BFL/Shetland/Silk and has a generous meterage at 410m/100g. The colours are really bright, I went out of my way to make it outlandish but I think the gamble paid off. The colour interactions in these combos really are striking, they take my breath away each time I look at them… given that most of my wardrobe consists of plain dark colours I think these pops of colour would work really well 🥰

The pattern is now live on Ravelry: Burstling

Dom is running a promotion with the pattern release so if you just want to buy the pattern you can grab it while it’s hot. Or, if you would like one of the pattern + yarn kits you can find them here.

I would love to your version of the Burstling. Happy knitting ❤️

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