Lace Shawl number 1

shawl1
Originally uploaded by Jam_mam.

Happy New Year to All :o)

This is to be the year of Lace!

Here is the first lace project for 2007. It is the free pattern which came with my Lace Club (Posh Yarn) membership in August. I started it straight away but in a finer lace than the one which came as the club lace yarn that month. Maybe that was a mistake but I have loved this project and picked it up and put it aside depending on the demands of the months as they passed. I also didn't have circular needles in the small size called for in the pattern as my Denis's don't go down that far, so I just used the smallest ones I had :o)

The pattern for the centre isn't hard to remember but I have diligently followed the longhand instructions rather than the chart. In 2007 I hope to do another shawl reading the chart instead. At first I could manage a couple of pattern repeats in a session but by the end 1 was a struggle, I haven't counted how many stitches there were by the cast off! You have no idea how hard I had to scold myself to make me do the last two repeats, I tried it on to guess if it would be long enough after blocking several times, and I mean several. But no I was firm with myself and using the phot on the pattern as a guide I kept going and going and going until I was loosing the will to live. Finally I got to the border and mistakenly heaved a sigh of relief in the hollow conviction that I was entering the home straight and the new year might even see it finished and blocked ready to display, no such luck!

At this stage I am still knitting on the border. When I did this for my gran's shawl I found it very satisfying, this pattern is a little harder, or I am paying less attention!

Near the top of the sidethat I have finished, I made a mistake but just kept going and on future repeats was more careful to count my rows correctly. Now that I have photograhed it I see that the error is obvious and I should really pull this side out and redo it. Grrr! Drat! and other not so polite words!

Will I bother to do this, or just hope no one ever sees or if they do that they are too polite to mention it. Hmmm! Not decided. The part of me that nagged to do the 'correct' number of repeats is nagging to frog and reknit to achieve that elusive erfection that my Virgoan nature craves (and fails so often to attain, near enough is good enough, right?)

Besides, I have another problem as I am now working down the other edge and the pattern says 'reverse the shaping'. Oh, eh? What does that mean. I can do the basic of putting the descreases and yo in the other way round in the pattern, ie after the yo k4 instead of before, but should I substitute k2tog for the skpsso? Or, should I leave them as skpsso? Why do pattern writers assume I have knowledge of anything?

Note to self: when writing up patterns do not assume your reader knows anything about anything, ever. Which reminds me I must type up the pattern for the top I made DD1 and send it to Tess. Ho hum!

So tonights task (how quickly can I get DD2 to bed and how early is acceptable for bathtime?) is to finish the edging on side two (guessing how to reverse shaping) and then to ponder whether to frog side one. Oh dear I do hate to have to make decisions. I guess that having taken 5 months to get this far I really SHOULD frog, shouldn't I? Ho hum!