63 Down...

Hi K.,

I finished row 63 today. Here's one of my (trademarked) Lousy Photographs.

I pinned it out on a folded bedsheet on the carpet, and there was a wrinkle in the sheet, which accounts for some of the visual distortions. (This shawl is going to be an amazing thing to block out.)

I've had a push on this in the past weeks, because I decided I wanted to finish the first page of the border charts (1 of 3) before going on vacation. (Which starts in 12 days, 5 hours, 54 minutes, 47:23:54 seconds -- but who's counting?) That took me to row 62, and then I decided -- for luck or something -- to do row 63. I won't work on it til I'm back, and I'm actually looking forward to taking the break.

I did find that it isn't always easy getting the stitches moved along the needle over the join between the cable and the needle. This is particularly true in the rows with the double overs, but I also had a few problems in some of the rows where there's a lot of plain knitting. Odd, that one.

Oh yea. I made on small alteration to the pattern. (Quelle surprise?) When working the double overs, Sharon has you work 1 or 2 of them as single overs. This is to accomodate the stitch count, and the difference between working a pattern requiring an even number of sitiches in a space where there is normally an odd number of stitches.*  I was bothered by these single overs, and was plotting how to work them as double overs and adjust the stitch count as I went so all would work out in the end.  Then I saw that Sharon has already dealt with this and drawn a suitable chart on page 162 of "Heirloom Knitting", so I just plugged that into the Princess chart.

* Um, well, that's it more or less. Somebody is going to leave a comment telling me I've got that a little bit wrong, and they're right. But if I spelled it all out, somebody's head might explode and we'd be in really big trouble.

Comments

[katherine]

I might need it spelled out. Maybe.

My head is already exploding looking at the charts. Perhaps I've bit off more than I can chew, lace-wise, with Princess.

Sigh. Problem is, I've been so busy the last couple of weeks, I've not had a quiet moment to sit down and just really work on it. I always do better with a project just jumping in and working, rather than just thinking about things ahead of time.

And if that's a lousy photograph, I'm just imagining how beautiful Princess is right now.

[Duffy]

No head explosions! I don't want to get brains all over my Rose Trellis shawl!

[Sherri]

Re: blocking this shawl - I've noticed that a lot of the Heirloom Knitting shawls are really large, larger than I would ordinarily ever wear (and yeah, I intend to wear the ones I knit - I don't have any freezer space!) Would it be an act of insanity to try to scale one down a bit?
Sherri

[Ted]

I think it would be an act of insanity to try to scale down the Princess. It would be easier to design something similar from scratch.

Sharon and I had a little exchange of emails about these shawls made from really fine yarns, and she pointed out many of these complex garments were made for presentation or for competition -- so they may not have been intended for wear. Perhaps that's why some are quite large: you do see historical pictures of some draped on models and they trail on the floor.

The Rosebud isn't a large shawl. You could start with its centre and design your own borders out, so you'll get a shawl about as large as you want. Or you could work the Rosebud and add an extra pattern repeat on the borders, which would make a larger shawl.