Shoalwater Update

Shoalwater Shawl
click to enlarge
The Shoalwater Shawl is zipping along as fast I can work on it at this point. I'm still dealing with the left arm problems (overuse, I'm sure... and I suck at resting it). If I were to do the 4.5 repeats, I would have ten more rows to go. However, I'm sticking with the 5.5 repeats.

It's really hard to get a picture of it at this point... the stitches really bunch up on the needles, and of course, it's not blocked. I am bunching the neck to make sure I'm including that in my measurements. (if you look at the pattern photo, you'll see the model does that... it's one of the problems with the straight topped shawls, you need to create a fake neck shaping.... and one of the reasons I want to make sure that I have the additional length).

Jackie asked me in comments the other day about my yarn choice. I'm making this in Josyln's Fiber Farm lace weight yarn (Angel Hair) and the colorway is Plumes.

I have to say that I really debated if I wanted to do this shawl in lace weight yarn (I swatched A LOT of yarn for it). The pattern itself is very easy (and quite frankly, it's mostly garter stitch) and I knew that I would be needing a lot of repeats. I think in the back of my mind that I would start it and it would eventually get moved to the UFO closet with me thinking "oh I should work on that... it's going to be a nice shawl" then move onto something else. Basically I didn't think I would have the fortitude to finish it. However, the lace is so easy to do (again, it's mostly garter) and once the pattern waves were noticable, I was hooked. I'm having problems NOT working on it (when I have other things to knit and when I shouldn't be knitting at for a little bit).

I think the key in choosing yarn for this is making sure that you have really long color repeats in your hand dyed yarn. The pattern gets lost if the yarn is either a subtle color change or if they are so short you don't see the waves.

Meanwhile, I'm teaching the Taste of Aran Afghan block of the month class tomorrow, and while my June block is done, I need to get my July block on the needle so I can demonstrate the block (but I would rather be knitting my Shoalwater).