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This is my Pacific Northwest shawl designed by Evelyn Clark from Fiber
Trends. The color isn't quite right here. It's actually a soft
blue, somewhat like blue denim. I made this some months ago, but
I just got around to dressing it and getting some photos of it. I
dressed mine to 72"X41.5", across the top and down the back. |
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This is another view of the shawl. It took less than 4 oz. of
yarn. I used Jaggerspun Zephyr, a wool and silk yarn, and a
US size 6 circular needle to make it. My husband couldn't believe
how light it was when he picked it up. It really is just a whisper
in your hands, but it feels wonderful and cozy on. |
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Here you can see the detail of the patterns a little better. At the
top are the seagulls, then under that are the evergreen trees, sand dollars,
water, and fish; along the edge, the scallops are the shells. |
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June, 2003--This is a work in progress, the Forest Path stole, an entrelac
pattern, designed by Faina Letoutchaia in Interweave Knits magazine.
This is not dressed, and it looks rather puffy here, but it will flatten
out to lace once it's finished and dressed. I'm using Jaggerspun
Zephyr again, just another color. I will have enough yarn left from
this pound cone for another shawl. A lot of people have asked about
the color of this yarn. This color is as close to the original as
I could get on my monitor; however, it shows a bit bluer than the actual
yarn. The label inside the cone calls this "Teal," but it is a light
teal, very soft and lovely. |
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I don't know whether you can tell much about the stole here.
The stole uses moss stitch for the border and edge triangles, and then
the entrelac is made of rows of three patterns: fern, birch leaves, and
lily-of-the-valley. I'm on tier 10 on it now, so that means I'm a
bit less than half of the way through with the entrelac. Then I have
the top triangles and all the border to finish. One thing I like
about this stole is that with entrelac, you never have long rows to do.
Twenty stitches or so to a row in the block, and you're through and ready
for the return trip. I used a 24" circular #3 needle for the short
borders only. All the rest of the time I used two double pointed
needles. |
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September, 2003--The stole is finished at long last. I'm never
one to have very elegant surroundings when I'm dressing my knitwork, and
this is an example. Mismatched towels, notwithstanding, this is the
stole on the floor with nylon cording to pull it into shape around the
edge and pinned down. When it was finished, the stole was so puffy
it looked way too short and too narrow. (You can see how puffy it
was in the photos above.) I was unsure that mine would really dress
out flat. When I dressed it, though, it magically became a pleasing
86"X32". It's hard to believe this is the same project, isn't it? |
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Here you can see the three pattern blocks contained in the Forest Path
Stole. On the left, top to bottom, is a row of birch leaves; then
comes the fern blocks and, after that, the lily-of-the-valley. The
little blooms of the lily-of-the-valley are known as nupps. I did
mine a bit different from the pattern. I did two yarn overs before
and after each bloom instead of just one, and on the next row, I dropped
the extra yarn overs and then knitted all the stitches together for each
nupp. This gave me consistently sized nupps without struggling to
leave them loose enough to insert the needle on the next row. I found
it much easier to knit that way. |
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This is the stole finished at last. The side borders were attached
in a sliding loop technique which I found easy to do, though slow.
Rather than knitting the long border edge and the stole edge together as
one, you draw up a long loop with the working yarn through the stole edge
and use it to knit the border out and back. Then you draw up a new
loop for the next two rows of border. It's a fun technique.
I started it May 25, and I finished it Sept. 4. I am not a fast knitter,
and I didn't knit on it every day. However, I got into a rhythm while
knitting it, and I found that changing from block to block kept the project
interesting to me. I learned a lot doing this pattern, and I enjoyed
every minute of it.. |