Christmas Eve Swallowtail

I'm fairly pleased with how it came out. I think the blocking could have been better, and some of the nupps aren't as lovely as they could be. But still, it was a fun knit and an excellent learning experience.

Peace on earth!

This is the last of my holiday knitting--a present for my mother-in-law.

After all my ridiculous problems with this shawl, I started worrying about how it would look. All of yours were so beautiful, but this--this--I mean, honestly, the thing looked like a total rag.

I was knitting with 100% silk from Woven Gems, bought at the Virginia Fall Fiber Festival. How would the yarn block out? Would the silk hold the block? If this thing wasn't really beautiful, I was going to be annoyed after all we went through together...



I shouldn't have worried.



More pics on my blog.

Thanks for this inspiring knit-along!

Finished!

Here is my Swallowtail shawl, done in a dark plum Misti Alpaca on size 5 needles. Pre-blocking:
...and done!

This one is for me

Yarn : Jaeger Matchmaker #741 Mineral
Needles: Size 3 circular
Dimensions: 53" across the top, 24" top to point
Mods: Just the yarn. I am very happy with the result.

Back to where I started

In my last post to this KAL I told you about the stupid mistake I made late in the game and could not recover from--and how I frogged the whole shawl. Well, finally, despite an absolutely ridiculous number of idiotic mistakes (chronicled on my blog for the last few days), I am finally back to the point where I frogged before. I'm hoping all the silly problems are behind me and that I can make some decent progress now. Seeing all the beautiful shawls shown on this KAL has definitely helped!

Now You See Em, Now You Don't

Two pictures, hours apart. I tried my best with the Swallowtail's nupps, but even when knitting them extremely loosely on the RS, and doing sl2, p3tog instead of p5tog, on the WS, I found them very hard to do. I had a devil of a time getting that very last (or first, depending on how you look at it) knit stitch onto the needle for the p3tog. Trying to make that happen really made my wrist hurt, too.

Still, I persevered and made it to Row 7 of the first Lily of the Valley chart. Then, somehow, I dropped a nupp and that was that. I couldn't figure out how to re-create the nupp. I took it as a sign to let the nupps go, decided to rip back to the lifeline. The shawl's now moving along nicely, sans nupps. I know the Lily of the Valley motif won't be nearly as pretty without them, but they just aren't worth the aggravation.

Despite my nupp woes, I do like this pattern! I can't wait to post a finished picture.

Done~!

yarn: one skein of Trekking XXL, #77
needles: Susan Bates Silverado 16-inch circs - size 5 for the body, size 9 for the bind-off
width: 49 inches
height: 23 inches
date started: October 27
date finished: November 02 01

This truly was an easy and enjoyable knit. :)

The yarn for this originally started out as a sock (because durr, it's sock yarn) , but I really wanted to see how it would look in a shawl. I have to say that Trekking is okay to work with, but I was pleasantly surprised at how this particular colorway just worked in this project. The striping is nice and subtle.

This picture was taken with a flash to bring out the stripes: