The Swallowtail Shawl is finished!

I finished the Swallowtail Shawl. It took 2 months, and I ignored it quite a bit, but it's done and given away. I liked knitting the edging better than the center, and yes, I even liked doing the nupps. Knitting this was pretty magical, if it hadn't been for an excellent chart by Eunny Jang, I could not have wrapped my head around how this work out. It's pretty amazing.



Blocking this was fun. I had this blob of alpaca, got it wet, then with some kite string and pins - voila! Look what happened! I used kite string for the top edge, and I got some quilt pins (with birght yellow balls on the ends - hard to miss if you forget one) that were nickel plated and 1 3/4" long. I made sure they were rust proof by letting one sit one the sink all day in a bit of water. I put a thick beach towel on the bed and stretched the shawl and pinned it out. The alpaca dried very quickly, and blocking it wasn't the dreadful chore I imagined it would be.



Swallowtail Shawl from Interweave Knits
Misti Alpaca 2 ply lace, less than 1 skein, 38 gm used
Size 4 Addi Lace needles



Cupcake and Ollie.

No, I'm not done yet.

The Swallowtail Shawl. Still. It's not going as slowly, except that now there are double the stitches from when I was whining about it originally.
This has been a learning experience, and I'm just now starting to enjoy it. I fudge some of my knitting sometimes, but not with lace. Lace demands perfection. Everything shows and you can't say "Oh, yeah those stitches kind of line up" or "Yeah, that YO is just very small." No. You have to rip the sucker back or the lace looks stupid.
I started making stupid lace, and then I realized that I had to frog it and get it right. No wonder it's taking so long!

After this I'm working on Aunt G's sweater (don't ask me how long she's been waiting, well, let's just say it was for a milestone birthday and another one is around the corner) and the most beautiful thing is that it's in fluffy and fudge-able MOHAIR!