Saturday, April 14, 2007

The spinners shawl


I have been busy with my knitting again. I started this shawl last Saturday in one of my knitting classes that I teach each Saturdays. I have been wanting to make this shawl for a while and I thought I would just have to spin the yarn to make it. The yarn is hand spun wool at about 12 wpi or a DK weight. One thing that I did learn while knitting this shawl was when knitting a garder stitch lace pattern keep in mind that when you block the project out it will grow. I added a pattern repeat so that it would be a bit longer, well it blocked out quite a bit longer. The pattern says it supposed to be 32 inches long well mine is 43 inches long. Which in the end is fine but I'm glad I only added on repeat instead of two as I was thinking of doing.
Also I had to be flexible with the beads. I has some really neat dark blue beads that I had in mind for this shawl but when I got to the point of adding the beads I found them to be to small. So I went to several different craft and bead stores to find something that would work. The pattern called for me to knit a stitch and then place the stitch back on the left needle and then take a crochet hook through the bead and pull up the loop through the bead whole, then place the stitch back on the right side needle and continue on. Its hard to see but there are three beads at every point. After looking all over the place I was able to find some nice teal green glass beads at all places Walmart. Go figure. All in all it was fun to do from the start of the spinning to the final cast off and blocking. I think it will work really well as a nice everyday shawl to wear with jeans or to wear with something more dressed up.

3 comments:

Carissa said...

The shawl looks great! I've had the same problem when using that technique to attach beads. I think that is one reason that I tend to prestring my beads.

Kathy said...

Wow!
Beautiful.

Theresa said...

Wow! That was fast knitting! :o) It turned out great.