Wednesday 11 February 2009

Myrtle Leaf Shawl

The snow has all melted and London has reverted to mostly rainy weather. Today however is gorgeous. Cold but oh so sunny with a clear blue sky. I'm not really a hot weather person -- but I love a sunny day.

So immediately after today's update I'm off to walk through the park. Greenwich Park is stunning on a sunny day (on any day really) and being able to stroll around it while the rest of the world is studying or working always feels a bit decadent!

Although the park has many trees, none are Myrtle trees so I won't be able to confirm whether this Myrtle Leaf Shawl from Victorian Lace Today is an accurate representation or not.

I knit this on 3.75mm needles using just over 1.5 skeins of Jaggerspun Zephy WoolSilk in Ebony (between 900 and 1000 yards).

It's a pretty straightforward knit (although do check out the errata if you decide to make it - there are a couple of errors in the chart). The body of the shawl is a 12 row pattern repeat - where each row is a pattern row (so no purling back).

The edging is knitted on. It is an 8 row repeat and works up reasonably quickly.

This wasn't one of my favourite projects knitting-wise. It wasn't challenging and the knitting got a little dull towards the end (40 repeats of the leaf pattern!) The shawl pre-blocking was particularly uninspiring.

Having said that, it's been very popular with the non-knitters who've seen it. In fact, it's been more popular with non-knitters than many of the complicated shawls I've knit.

And I'm sure there's a little lesson in that somewhere.

Unblocked the shawl was 18" x 50" and it blocked to an impressive 21" x 76".

9 comments:

Kate said...

It's beautiful, but I can see why it would get a bit repetitive. :-)

fleegle said...

I love it--sexy and delicate. But yeah, knitting the same repeat over and over is not much fun :(

Gale Bulkley said...

It is beautiful and thanks for the heads up. It's been in my queue for a while and I was getting close to starting it. That there's no purl-back row just removed it from my queue.

DeltaDawn said...

I was feeling a bout of lace knitting coming on this morning since I'm between projects, and here you are with yet ANOTHER stunning knit! I'll be back to look through your projects - I bet I'll pick somthing you've already done...

Angelika said...

When do you have the time to knit all those fabulous shawls. I think you are already half way throught the book, right?

Anonymous said...

Beautiful!

LittleBerry said...

It's stunning and is on my list to do but haven't decided wether to do it for me or a recipient.....

Lacefreak said...

Beautiful but possibly crazy making for sure. My hats off to you :-)

Anonymous said...

It must have been a brain-numbing knit, but it's absolutely gorgeous. <3