Monday, September 29, 2008

29 September: Shawl and socks

The knitting has progressed; the two major projects near completion. Here's a photo of the shawl, knitting finished, tidying up to do, then blocking -

Shawl blocking or dressing seems to be quite complicated, from my reading on Ravelry - involving wires, lots and lots of pins, and a large area to spread it out. My effort will certainly need to be stretched out, as it is too small at the moment. I used a pattern (shock! horror!) for this, as I wanted to understand the shape, and I am not experienced at lace knitting. I am now planning a smaller project to my own design.

The waistcoat has been considered, and a decision made about the edge treatment; a start has been made on the front band, with about 350 stitches on the needle (small beer when compared with the 890 or so rows in the shawl border).

Having done these 2 larger projects, both of which needed full attention all the time to avoid mistakes (and I didn't!), I wanted to have something no-brain on the needles. So, yet another pair of socks, this time very plain, for DH, so a matching pair, using some Trekking sock yarn I dyed recently -

The green touches looked a bit odd in the skein, but they make the dull brown a little more interesting in the fabric. And the pale grey should match his new beard nicely....

3 comments:

tea and cake said...

These look lovely - I'd love to see piccies of the 'pinned-out' shawl! Good luck with it. Karen x

Granny J said...

A very pretty shawl! I'll be interested in seeing the next one, the one that you design.

stitchwort said...

Thank you both.

The shawl has been washed and spread out, but is still rather small. :(

The proposed own-design effort will be more of a triangular scarf than a full-size shawl, I think. It may get cast on tomorrow.