Knitting Progress

I have too totally been knitting. See!
I really liked the funky Curved Shawl, and had wanted to knit it as soon as I got VLT. Of course, it took me a while to figure out the charting, especially the instructions in red (that would be the ones about the number of repeats per row...I still don't get that, and I've got a PhD! Okay, I didn't look at it too hard). The casting on using e loops -painful. but once I got going on this sucker, it was easy peasy (especially since it's a garter stitch lace). I could totally work on it while I was tired since you totally can tell when you've messed up.

Initially, I read in VLT how this pattern can be knit using much larger needles for a much looser and yet still very lovely lace. Well, judge for yourself. I used US9 instead of US6 for this fingering yarn (70%angora).

This is not blocked, in fact, it's not finished and here's why...I stopped knitting before the end of the pattern because I did not want a huge ginormous wrap, but a nice medium sized one. I then cast on for the edging, to find that using my needle size, the edging is over 3 inches wide and very loopy and not at all attractive. Which means that I need to actually (y'all gasp now) figure out my own edging! Oh, criminy!

That is why I started and am almost finished with this beauty. This is knit with Colourmart's dk weight smooth silk (they had their lace weight steam plied by somebody). The resulting yarn is absolutely divine and scrumptious and yes, that's the other reason I started on this instead. The yarn is super. And it's much darker than the over exposed picture shows. In real life, the color is much much darker, as in blackish, as in I can wear it as black. As for working with it, it's only a slight pain because it's plied by twisting their lace weight yarn and I've accidentally pulled on a strand or two. I think that's my only worry, that upon wear, it's going to get snagged.

specs (before I forget)
yarn: Colourmart
needle: US 6
pattern: Convertible from Knitty
modifications: yes. I cast on (5X13) for pattern plus the 6X2 edging is 77 stitches (hey, I did that without calculators or paper and pencil)

Folks on the intarweb said that if Convertible is too wide, then the shrug look is way too big. So I swatched (yes, me. I swatched) and figured out the width it should be. Of course, as I'm almost finished, I'm totally stressing about it being too narrow, resulting in my arms looking like sausages encased in intestine lining (wait, there's got to be a better metaphor), resulting my arms looking like a Christmas ham (you know, with the netting?), or like play dough being pushed out of an extruder? Okay, I'll stop now.

Actually, it will be fine (unless my arms get monstrously huge like from this show The Man With Exploding Arms I watched last night. ew. again. eww.). Without blocking, there's enough room, so with blocking, it'll be awesome. And if not? well, I'm not a shrug person anyway so I'll wear it as a scarf.