Ember Agaricglow

She brings hallucinations. She lives where fireflies mate and breed. She can only be seen in the light of a full moon. She wears dresses that glow with fiery colours and has russet-coloured wings like a brightly coloured butterfly. 

Ember Agaricglow

In Forest glades

Where fireflies dance

Beneath the moon

On leaf and branch

There dwells a maid

Of midnight fair;

Pale is her skin,

Dark is her hair.

Ember eyes,

A heart of flame;

A vision in moonlight;

Speak not her name!

Or weave she will

A web of deep

Entangled dreams

to haunt your sleep.

Hallucinations

She'll bring to thee;

A fairy charm

Which has no key.

 My completed fairy for the Ravelry Fairy KAL.  This has been so much fun, I've already got another fairy in the works:  Hazel Catdancer!

Fairy Knit-Along

I joined a Fairy Knit-along (Fairy KAL) on Ravely that has been awesome good fun!  It is being sponsored on four groups:

Fiona McDonald's Fans

How do you make dolls

Fiber Fairies

The rules are simple:  create a Fairy name and description using this online Fairy Name Generator, then make a fairy to match.  You can use any pattern you like, and combine knit, crochet, felting and sewing techniques.  The fairy needs to be completed in order to join a Fairy Meet-up on Halloween.

I am using the Grace Notes pattern, and my Fairy is described as follows:

Ember Agaricglow

She brings hallucinations. She lives where fireflies mate and breed. She can only be seen in the light of a full moon. She wears dresses that glow with fiery colours and has russet-coloured wings like a brightly coloured butterfly. 

As she has taken shape in my mind, she has pale ivory skin with hair the color of midnight.  Nightshade tatoos are embroidered on her body, and her eyes are the color of embers.

I wanted realistic looking butterfly wings for her, so I modified a couple of my crochet butterfly patterns: the Swallowtail and the Milkweed butterflies, then decided to add to this a pattern for Luna Moth wings as well.  

Grace Notes Butterfly Wings

She still needs hair, and her fairy finery.  Coming soon :-)

Victoria Grace

The latest Grace Note is Victoria Grace.  She is knit in Knit Picks Oyster Heather yarn, with a combination of boucle and straight mohair yarns, plus a shimmery strand of golden lace weight mohair.  She has blue eyes and a very sweet dispostion.

She is wearing Victorian lace underwear, and a robe knit from lace weight mohair yarn.  I have to confess, the robe was a royal pain to knit!  This cobweb-fine yarn kept wanting to slide off my needles, especially working the sleeves in dpns.  I do not have specific instructions for it; in general, knit a lace panel for the bottom edge, long enough to allow you to pick up 80 stitches without puckering the knitting.  Then, work the body with raglan decreases to the underarms (48 sts on the needle).  Knit 10, bind off four, knit 20, bind off 4, knit 10.   Finish the robe like the raglan sweater pattern, working the sleeves on dpn's beginning with 20 sts in K2P2 ribbing, then increase to 24 sts for the length of the sleeve.  Bind off four and knit 20, then join to the body.  Raglan decrease down to 40 sts and work two rows of garter stitch.  I used size 2 and 4 needles, if you use a sportweight yarn you might want to use size 2 and 3 needles (the smaller needle for ribbing only).

I'm not too proud of the quality of the knitting, but it does have a lovely drape :-)

The underwear, however, was quite simple and made up equally well with worsted cotton yarn or sportweight cotton yarn.

Victorian Undies

On the left, worsted cotton yarn; on the right, sportweight cotton yarn.

Amilia Thistledown

Amilia Thistledown, a golden skinned elven child with a talent for spinning thistledown into gossamer yarn, to knit lighter than air fairy shawls :-)

She is a Grace Notes doll, with elf ears.  Her hair is fun fur, which is a fun and easy way to make a doll wig.  She has dangly glass earrings, and her dress is basically the nightgown pattern with a different lace edging.  Her shawl is pretty close to thistledown; knit from lace weight silk/mohair yarn.

We took pictures in Garfield Park and around the conservatory.  So many pretty purple flowers!