Comfort Shawl by Sandi Wiseheart

My Ravelry Post: here
Pattern: from Knitting Daily or Ravelry
Yarn: Natural Fantasy Baby Camel (for Beatrice Galli)
Needles: US 7
Note: There is an error in the current version of the pattern on Row 43 - it says you should decrease after the first YO at the beginning and the end of the RS row, but if you do that the front pieces won’t be triangular, so ignore those decreases, but do all the other ones.

Also I made the whole thing longer, by about 3-4″ (because I had 5 balls of yarn I wanted to use for the project), and I replaced the flower-lace edging with gothic arches, which I found in ‘Introduction to Knitting’ Edited by Nicky Hayden, (published by Marshall Cavendish Publications Ltd in 1975)

Here is the chart I made:

Conclusion: I like it. It’s incredibly soft, and I’ve loved the yarn (but not known what to do with it), for a long time. I think it’s going to prove really useful, both for wearing to posh do’s (like our friends wedding next month) or for keeping warm in front of the tv, or computer.

It knitted up really quickly (though it would have been quicker if I’d trusted my gut about the pattern error), and wasn’t particularly boring, given that alot of it is plain stocking stitch. It’s probably taken about 3 weeks in total, but I also knit a pair of socks at the same time. Point being that it would probably work as a decent christmas/birthday present, without being too much of a time commitment.

I’m definately interesting in learning more about Faroese Isles shawls, and their shoulder shaping, so I’m looking forward to reading Stahman’s Shawls and Scarves, which my sister is bringing back from North Carolina for me in a couple of weeks.

Next up: PEGBAG!

Well knitting the ripped section back up didn’t seem to take that long actually, and by the time I got to the Bluestockings meeting on Wednesday I was pretty much ahead of the game.

And by the time I got *home* from the Bluestockings meeting, (after a quick bit of dirty maths) it turned out to be time to start the edging. Actually it might turn out that I should have started the edging about 4 rows earlier, but there is a wiggle room so i’m not going to panic too much.

This is where I’m deviating from the pattern (well that and making it longer). So it’s 24 (or probably 22) rows of edging and then 8 rows of moss-stitch (at which point I lose the will to live…) and then I get to block and see what I’ve got.

Please note that W has decided it’s a cape. And that he’s a little jealous that I have knitted myself a cape, and not made him one.

omg I achieved MINUS 6″ of knitting today.

Crap.

Look! Content!

I know… it’s shocking, considering how much I seemed to abandon my old craft blog. I was always making things - it’s just that I got used to not being able to blog about them, and sort of stopped blogging about anything. But - after a couple of false starts I’m properly back, and the business is well on it’s way to being started, so I thought I’d blog about what I’m knitting at the moment, so that people who come nosying over from typepad will have new things to read (finally!)

So lets talk about camel yarn.

Gorgeous isn’t it?

It’s incredibly soft too.

I bought five 25g balls of this camel yarn while in Florence on our honeymoon, and at one point it was being knitted up a very cute scarf, but to be honest I was using needles that were too thin, and it was turning out no-where near as soft as it was in the ball, and I’m not really one for thin, back and forth scarf-knitting, so it got put back into the stash, and I spend a long time thinking about what it should be.

The thing is, I wanted it to be something special, because a) yarn from Italy, b) yarn from my honeymoon, and c) very very soft camel yarn that I can’t get easily here in the uk.

Cue the Comfort Shawl:

A small, simple shawl that would show off the softness of the camel, and be useful, given how cold our house gets in the winter.

And it’s all going swimmingly - except there is an error on row 43 which means that the shawl has stopped growing in width at the front for the last ball and a half. And having looked at the picture again…

Yeah, the decrease the pattern asks for after the border edges shouldn’t be there. Those front panels should be getting wider, and on mine… not so much.

So I’m frogging in. In fact I’ll go do it now.

…

So this is what I lost:

and this is what I’m left with:

However, I have decided to be the optimist, and point out that I now get to spend even more time knitting with this yarn, so it’s not all bad.

(Over half though… that’ll teach me to just blindly follow the pattern. :( )