Niebling Leaf shawl complete

Here's the finished shawl from a Lena magazine. It's official name is "Rosa romantic", and there's variants in Lavori VIII and it's suggested it's related to Phoenix Palme. A couple of notes on this knit is that it's ginormous. And it would have been even larger had I not modified the last rows of leaves and the edging. The original is 211 rounds and I dropped it down to 198 by shortening the leaves and changing the edging.

Knit-wise, this was pretty simple, but as I mentioned before, you need to twist the twists and purl the purls on the 'rest row', which means no resting row. The yarn is pretty nice. It's Colourmart 100% cashmere. I'm off on vacation tomorrow, but when I get back, I might toss it in a bag and put it in the washer...or not.

Oh, there was binding between leaf set 2 and 3, so I added a hex mesh/section and then took it out toward the end.

Would I recommend this pattern? Well, yes, but I would have something a tad more challenging at the same time. I didn't bother recharting, so I ended up coloring in the leaf motifs. That helped me alot to see the general leaf pattern. And since it's kinda boring, it was a nice little break too.

btw--I originally used a white shirt for modeling this shawl, but it was so large that it looked silly. So I had to go and pull out a lab coat (shh, yes, I own my own lab coats) and use that for showcasing the shawl

specs:
start: July 13, 2008
finish: August 1, 2008
yarn: US3 and then US4 (when I needed longer needles--should have probably just started w/ US4, but whatever).
pattern: Lena March 2006 Rosa Romantic
mods: to release binding and to make it a tad smaller than given. And changed edging. Also changed crochet loops too.

all I can say is that if it weren't so not an exciting knit, I'd do it again as a tablecloth. Maybe I'll switch it up and do the Lavori VIII one...

My next project was going to be the WRS from Sharon Miller, but with Ravelympics and season of lace and vacation, I might wait--or not.

I might do Hyrna Herborgar with some lovely red cashmere that I've had and knit and ripped twice for two other projects.

Slaying the Dragon

I'm done I'm done I'm done.

Blocked yesterday. Here it is.



It's massive. It's huge. I wish I had used a smaller needle.


okay, I'm off to the bead store to find a bead for the eye.

Curved shawl edging done!

You may remember my dilemma about the Curved shawl from VLT -- you know, the fact that the edging looked all floppy and sloppy and such? Well, I spent some time poring through my VLT and Heirloom Lace and other lace books, only to decide that I liked the original edging for this shawl. What to do?

I decided that I'll just go down a couple of sizes in needles and see how that looks. Hey, if it looks dumb, I can always rip it out. (The wonderful part of the edging is that it's not actually connected to the body, so...if you feel the need to rip, no harm, no fowl.)

So, I went down to a US6 needle and sort of followed their pickup strategy. Since I'm now using a smaller needle, once in awhile I would join a third stitch to the body of the scarf (instead of the 2 into 1 suggested by the book). I forgot to do some simple math toward the end and didn't finish off a whole edging pattern, but it was close enough that I was totally okay with it.

Here's the finished shawl, and I think it looks purty. Did I ever give the specs for this shawl?
Specifications:
US9 for main lace, US6 for edging
Yarn: 70% angora 30% nylon in raspberry (amount? gee, 2 balls of yarn)
pattern: VLT curved shawl
time to finish: beginning of March to March 25 (blocked March 28)

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.