Knitting Kninja

The story of how this shawl came to be starts with Project Spectrum.  The current theme, East, is connected with the color yellow, which color, much as I’m currently in love with it, is rather under represented in my stash.  One of the only yellow skeins I had was the gorgeous Socks that Rock in 24 Karat that Sarah sent me.  And I loved that skein.  I knew I wanted to use it for something special, but none of the patterns that appealed matched the yardage in the skein.

The obvious thing to do, of course, was to use my lack of experience in knitting lace and make up my own pattern.  Or at least it seemed that way.  I quickly ran into issues with my charts.  (I’m learning, apparently, because I actually made charts before I started knitting, rather than desperately trying to decipher what I’d done after the fact.)  After a whole lot of frustration, I decided to simplify the lace I was planning and I went back to my books and settled on the always lovely gull wing lace.  It’s used so often that it can’t ever really be unexpected, but I thought it had real possibilities.

So that’s how I made the shawlette.  I don’t yet have a full picture, but I’m wearing it all the time, and I love it.  It’s comfy and pretty and shiny and gold and just wonderful.  It’s astonishing how much like gold the 24 Karat is when it’s knit up.  In the skein it appeared to simply be a very rich egg yolk yellow, but knit up it shimmers.

It’s not perfect, but I’m very happy with it.  Knitting it through showed me where the problems remained and I revised my charts.  I knew I wanted to make a larger version and I knew I wanted to use Malabrigo Silky Merino.  The gorgeous Cape Cod Grey at the store looked perfect.  Cape Cod Grey sounds very dull to me for such a silvery hue.  It’s almost metallic.  The lace at the edges looks like spearpoints to me when it’s knit in that grey.

The charts are all set, and now I just need to get modeled shots and put it altogether into a pattern.  I think it will be ready for test knitting early next week.  I’m feeling very excited about this whole thing, and I hope you guys like this one as much as I do!

This entry was posted on June 26, 2009 at 12:12 am and is filed under Clothilde, Finished Projects, Knitting, Original Pattern, Shawls. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.