Love at first sight!
Do you believe in love at first sight?! I am not sure if I believe in the human kind of love at first sight.. but, I definitely believe in a knitter's love at the first sight of a pattern. That is what happened to me when I saw the pattern for Aase's shawl and me being myself, I went ahead and bought the pattern right away. This happened in July 2010. And, did the love succeed? Did the knitter meet the finished shawl?! All these questions are going to be answered in this post. That sounded like the trailer of a cheesy romance novel! Yes. The love did succeed and the knitter has a lovely shawl to drape around. :-) I finished the shawl this week and here it is..
The shawl looked like a frumpy mess when it came off the needles and it bloomed after blocking. The wingspan of this shawl is 6ft! I've been wanting a shawl which will drape around me nicely and this will do nicely. It uses approximately 600 yards of lace weight yarn and I used 1.5 skeins of Knitpicks Shadow Lace yarn. The yarn was a RAK from Sue aka bandersnatch on Ravelry. Its very difficult to capture the color of the yarn but it is green with flecks of blue in it.
Do you want to see the ugly duckling before the shawl was blocked? The sea foam stitch looked messy and the lace border looked hopeful of looking dignified.
I blocked it on my guest bed and the shawl spanned the entire bed.. more than 6 feet of it. :-) and it took just 3 hrs for it to dry. Was that fast or what?! Here it is blocking on the bed..
I like the look of lace against the light..to see the light filtering through the eyelets. So, here are a few pics of the lace against the light.. you can see the view from my balcony through the shawl! ;-)
The body of the shawl is the simple garter-based sea foam stitch. The stitches opened up after blocking.I like the waves the pattern makes.
The shawl pattern comes in 5 sizes and I made the largest one available as I knew I have enough yardage to make the shawl in XL size. The body of the shawl makes for excellent TV knitting and it gets a while to get used to lace border. I found an easy trick to keep track of the lace pattern. I made sure that my sk2po stitches are falling in line one above the other. This helped me a lot in avoiding mistakes. I did NOT use a life-line in the entire shawl and I am proud of it. I did have to 'tink' one row of the body to correct a mistake but, other than that, it was a smooth and uneventful lace knitting journey. And, for the close-up of the lace border and scalloped edging.
Blocking was easy for this shawl. I threaded a waste yarn through the straight edge and tied the ends of the yarn to the bed posts on my guest bed. This helped me get a straight edge at the top. There are 25 scallops along the lace edge so, I was able to easily block it symmetrically.
This is by far the biggest lace project I've undertaken and I am glad I finished it although it hibernated for more than 5 months during my move from Hyderabad to Bangalore. I am yet to take glamor shots of the shawl on me. Hubster said he will click some snaps for me over the weekend. I hope to get good pics then.
Here are the stats:
Pattern: Aase's Shawl (Aase pronounced as 'oh-say')
Yarn: Knitpicks Shadow Lace
Needle: 3.25mm for body and 4mm for the lace border, 6mm for bind off.
Started: July 20,2010
Completed: February 15,2011
Ravelry project: Love at first sight!
On a side note, I am closing my Etsy shop and taking a break from it. I've been thinking of closing it for a while now as crafting for business was interfering with my crafting for pleasure. Then, RBI and Paypal made their policies difficult for Paypal users in India. So, this gave me the push to take the break. I do not regret this decision though. I enjoyed it while it lasted.. and, who knows.. I might even reopen the store.. but, for the moment my store is closed. It was a a road less taken for me and I would not have ventured into it without the support from my Hubster and my crafting friends. So, thank you all for supporting me with words and sales while I tested the waters.
On a happy note, the Paypal policy change made me change my for-sale pattern into a free one. So, now both my scarf patterns are available as free downloads. You can find them on the left pane on this page. :-) Do share with me if you decide to knit one of my patterns. I would love to see what you make.
-Josie
The shawl looked like a frumpy mess when it came off the needles and it bloomed after blocking. The wingspan of this shawl is 6ft! I've been wanting a shawl which will drape around me nicely and this will do nicely. It uses approximately 600 yards of lace weight yarn and I used 1.5 skeins of Knitpicks Shadow Lace yarn. The yarn was a RAK from Sue aka bandersnatch on Ravelry. Its very difficult to capture the color of the yarn but it is green with flecks of blue in it.
Do you want to see the ugly duckling before the shawl was blocked? The sea foam stitch looked messy and the lace border looked hopeful of looking dignified.
I blocked it on my guest bed and the shawl spanned the entire bed.. more than 6 feet of it. :-) and it took just 3 hrs for it to dry. Was that fast or what?! Here it is blocking on the bed..
I like the look of lace against the light..to see the light filtering through the eyelets. So, here are a few pics of the lace against the light.. you can see the view from my balcony through the shawl! ;-)
The body of the shawl is the simple garter-based sea foam stitch. The stitches opened up after blocking.I like the waves the pattern makes.
The shawl pattern comes in 5 sizes and I made the largest one available as I knew I have enough yardage to make the shawl in XL size. The body of the shawl makes for excellent TV knitting and it gets a while to get used to lace border. I found an easy trick to keep track of the lace pattern. I made sure that my sk2po stitches are falling in line one above the other. This helped me a lot in avoiding mistakes. I did NOT use a life-line in the entire shawl and I am proud of it. I did have to 'tink' one row of the body to correct a mistake but, other than that, it was a smooth and uneventful lace knitting journey. And, for the close-up of the lace border and scalloped edging.
Blocking was easy for this shawl. I threaded a waste yarn through the straight edge and tied the ends of the yarn to the bed posts on my guest bed. This helped me get a straight edge at the top. There are 25 scallops along the lace edge so, I was able to easily block it symmetrically.
This is by far the biggest lace project I've undertaken and I am glad I finished it although it hibernated for more than 5 months during my move from Hyderabad to Bangalore. I am yet to take glamor shots of the shawl on me. Hubster said he will click some snaps for me over the weekend. I hope to get good pics then.
Here are the stats:
Pattern: Aase's Shawl (Aase pronounced as 'oh-say')
Yarn: Knitpicks Shadow Lace
Needle: 3.25mm for body and 4mm for the lace border, 6mm for bind off.
Started: July 20,2010
Completed: February 15,2011
Ravelry project: Love at first sight!
On a side note, I am closing my Etsy shop and taking a break from it. I've been thinking of closing it for a while now as crafting for business was interfering with my crafting for pleasure. Then, RBI and Paypal made their policies difficult for Paypal users in India. So, this gave me the push to take the break. I do not regret this decision though. I enjoyed it while it lasted.. and, who knows.. I might even reopen the store.. but, for the moment my store is closed. It was a a road less taken for me and I would not have ventured into it without the support from my Hubster and my crafting friends. So, thank you all for supporting me with words and sales while I tested the waters.
On a happy note, the Paypal policy change made me change my for-sale pattern into a free one. So, now both my scarf patterns are available as free downloads. You can find them on the left pane on this page. :-) Do share with me if you decide to knit one of my patterns. I would love to see what you make.
-Josie
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