When preparing for the Indie Design GAL, we heard that one of the designers had gotten into an accident and couldn't promote her own patterns during the GAL. Many participating designers wanted to show support for her and bought her patterns. Natalia Sha designs lace shawls for advanced knitters, and as I had been thinking about knitting a shawl with lace and beads, it seemed like the perfect time to do that. I chose her Mountain Ash shawl, and found some blue beads and lace yarn in my stash.

It was a good decision, as I ran out of yarn a couple of rows before finishing the border. I undid the provisional cast on, and unraveled the first couple of set up rows of the lace border. ("Brilliant! You'll never have to buy yarn again, just keep unraveling from the other end!" said Business woman.) With this yarn I was almost able to finish the border, and then I used the variegated yarn to bind off. I was planning to use two colors for the main shawl, but it was so small that I didn't even need a whole skein of the variegated one.


Then it was just about easy stockinette stitch towards the end, and I was going to finish by the GAL dl. Well, things don't always work out as planned, and just before reaching the top I realised that I was decreasing at a too fast pace and what was supposed to be a small shawlette had turned into a tiny nothing. At this point I could have finished and just leave it at that, and had I known that Natalia was one of the unrepresented designers of the GAL I would have done that. But I didn't want a weird tiny shawl, so I unraveled the variegated part and started all over. It didn't take too long to finish knitting, but as I wasn't in a hurry to finish, it took about a month to block the shawl! You have to pin every 4 sts of the bind off, and I was dreading to do that. In the end, my little Troll Princess asked if she could help and we had a nice time blocking the shawl together. Afterwards, she asked if she could have the shawl, and I didn't have the heart to say no. It's not really my style, I just wanted to knit it. It might not be the style I'd like to see my daughter wear either, but she loved the beads and I didn't have other plans for the shawl so it's hers now. I'm not sure if I'd ever want to knit another one, there was too much of looking at the chart in the lace part to my taste, but I'm still happy that I did - I always enjoy trying new things when it comes to knitting!


It's CreaDienstag!