A New Shawl for a New Year

And so what have I been up to over Christmas while we have been holed up with the bad snow and with running noses and hacking coughs! Well, I decided that it would be a good idea to knit a silk shawl for Karen's 40 th birthday  which is not until 2012, but I wanted to give myself time! Having started this shawl though, I found I simply couldn't put it down and it has been finished in record time!      


Thanks go to my dear SIL for introducing me to the lifeline, without which there would have been a lot more frogging and frustration. This is so simple that I can't think why I didn't think of it myself. all you do is to thread a piece of waste yarn through the stitches after a pearl row. This means that if you drop a stitch, it can't go any further than the lifeline and is easy to pick up.

 These photos show the edging before and after blocking and now that it is blocked, I am quite pleased with it. Unfortunately, the nupps were not all as tidy as they might be. Silk yarn has no stretch and it was difficult to make the loops a consistent size and also get them large enough to ensure all the loops were caught on the peral row. In fact there were one or two which hadn't quite caught correctly and needed a bit of remedial stitching when blocking.

The question now is, do I fold it up and put it away for a year and a half, or do I claim it for myself and start wearing it and make another one for the special burthday present. Decisions so early in the new year!