I finished knitting and blocking my Aeolian shawl the other day. This is the third and final shawl in my series of shawls for my bridesmaids. Considering there is still almost two months (or should I be saying only two months!) until the wedding I feel like I'm quite ahead of the game!
I think that this shawl is just soooo pretty. For me, its all about the border. It was quite a pain at first to figure out what points exactly I was supposed to be pinning out, but after a bit of Ravelry image searching and a little trial and error I was off and running. I actually LOVE blocking lace. Not only for the end result, which is always so satisfying, but for the process itself. When I blocked the Girasole blanket I knit for my friend Jenna's wedding gift I pinned out every little loop, one pin in each. It took all afternoon, but I was in heaven!
I chose to knit this shawl using the alternative narrow edging rather than the original edging. To compensate for the smaller border I did 6 repeats of the yucca chart instead of 4. If I were to knit this shawl, in this yarn, again and wanted to do the original thicker border I would only do 4 repeats of the yucca chart to ensure that I don't run out of yarn.
The yarn is Tanis Fiber Arts Silver Label Mulberry silk in the Plum colourway, I used about 90% of one skein. After having knit 3 shawls in this yarn I can very confidently say that I am very proud to have this yarn as a part of my collection. But I think I've already gone on at length about how much I love this yarn, so I'll stop now.
At first I wasn't sure I loved the swooped wings on this shawl. But by not swooping them too dramatically I think that I can easily learn to live with it, in fact, I think I actually quite like it.
The pattern suggests 7 stitch or 9 stitch nupps. I instead elected to do 5 stitch nupps, for no other reason than because I was feeling lazy when I came around to the first nupp row. I think that next time I would make them 7 stitch nupps because if you're going to go to all the trouble of doing nupps, you might as well make them big!
Stella doesn't understand this whole knitting photography thing.
She finds the whole process very bizarre and unusual indeed.
Happy Weekend!