Not done—but, well almost. The last
repeat of the pattern was finished up last night and it was photographed—then after dinner, I began the tedious work of picking
up stitches for welted edge. And there are some ends to weave in,
too (you'll see them)
Well, the pick up got done. I haven't
knit a single stitch on a single row—yet. Today, my first order of
business is laundry, then the devil horns are going onto the egg head
hats, and then tonight, after dinner, the first row of the welt will
be knit. Or at least, that is the plan.
I like this shawl—even thought it has so many details I generally don't like!
It's a bit small for my taste; or
rather the welting makes it a bit small. The welting is much
tighter on the wide end—as happens, and looser on the narrow end.
The weight of the work stretched the welting out—more and more as
the shawl got heavier. I think the tight end will relax a bit with
wearing; or maybe that is just foolish hope. (It looks great on the
dress form—but the dress form is almost child sized!) At the same time, you can see how the lace stripes seem farther apart on the narrow end than they do on the wide end.
As the length of the rows changed, the
striping pattern changed—another detail that I normally don't
like..the long (264 stitches!) beginning rows are tweedy. The long
color changes weren't long enough for 2 rows of knitting.The stripes are tweed and only vaguely stripes. At the narrow end, a
color change lasted almost a full pattern repeat. There are
different dye lots too. Well, that is to be expected when you find
skeins with out bands.. but one skein has 3 knots—and the dye lot
changed with in the skein itself. The dye lot changes are visible in
some light, but with all the color and the tweed vs stripe
effects—they are not a dominant feature --as they might be in plan
knitting or a solid color.
(All three of the skeins had knots--I love the color way, but I hate knotty yarns--I would have been upset if I had paid full price for this--And I won't likely buy any more for the same reason.)
The whole thing is asymmetrical—and
while I am not as ridged about things being symmetrical as my DD, I,
too tend to prefer symmetry. Asymmetry is usually not my thing.
So there are a lot of reasons not to
love it.. But I love it anyway! It's warm--too, but acrylic often is--the welting keeps it from being over warm
