Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Quick Pics

I finally blocked the shawl I've been wearing for several weeks: gee what a difference a little water makes!

shawl6

I had difficulty convincing myself to block it, I just was so enjoying wearing it, hanging yarn ends notwithstanding.

Specs: knitted in the shape of the Irish Diamond Shawl by Cheryl Oberle, from her book Folk Shawls. But, obviously, no lace, garter stitch only.

I'm not much of a shawl person, but I wanted a warm, cushy morning wrap. The lace design conflicted with that concept, so I chose to just knit. Plus, it was easy mindless knitting for brain-dead evenings.

It was a pleasure to make, except I kept running out of yarn. I had to stop, spin and dye more. You can obviously see where: 4 skeins at the top, in reds, two next in wine, and 6 skeins in purple. I used the very last of the purple to crochet a firmer edge along the front opening and around the neckline. I think I ended up with a total of 16 inches of yarn left over, sheesh. The yarn is Polwarth, the first few skeins and the beginning of the shawl were pictured here.

Blocking consisted of a long soak in hot water, a spin out in the washer, and overnight spread out on towels. The blocking helped ease the transitions, all the yarn was (shocking!) just not exactly the same gauge. Blocking also made the fabric more supple, which is a good thing.

The shawl is performing morning warm up tasks beautifully, in both senses of the word. But shawls? so restricting of movement. So I guess I'll just have to sit, and maybe knit (or spin). Shucks.

5 Comments:

Blogger Charleen said...

You gotta do what you gotta do! I usually only wear shawls when doing just that.

12:43 PM  
Blogger Spindlers2 said...

Nice. I love that pattern.
How to move whilst wearing a shawl? Make the "wings" longer and wear it as a hap shawl.

(Is eight letters for the word verification a record? At least there was a "gw" in the middle")

1:05 PM  
Blogger claudia said...

Those colors and that design are so very Hless.

I just am thrilled to bits when you knit. :)

2:12 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Very nice. When I am relocated I too shall spend endless hours playing. Well at least more than I do now!

1:50 PM  
Blogger Birdsong said...

Very nice colors... wearing shawls isn't as fun as making them, but I had a jeweler friend make a pin to hold the thing together, and just found one with a "belt buckle" to duplicate; it actually stays on very well. Sad to miss spinning yesterday, but we had to get the present-shopping done. See you next month.

9:45 PM  

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