First of 2009...Queen Silvia

The Queen Silvia shawl is finally finished. Those 20 repeats in the center of the shawl seemed to last forever. Then I had to pick up stitches for the border. It was 130+258+130+258. Phew! I was not happy with my picked up stitches. I think that I knit the selvedge edge too loose and that resulted in a weird holey line where I picked up the stitches for the edging. The good news is that it doesn't look too bad after a good blocking. It probably won't even be seen when I wear it. I completely disliked the edging after the first two rows, but there was no way that I would take it out and pick up all of those stitches again. By that point, I just wanted to finish the shawl and move on to another project.

My knitting style has changed. When I first started knitting, everything was tight. Now, everything is too loose. I used a size 3 needle with this yarn and some parts of the shawl looks really open after blocking. I tend to like dense lace, but sort of like the openness of this one. I got a lot faster at purling all of those stitches together for the nupps by the middle of the shawl. I changed the nupps from 5 stitches in the pattern to 7 stitches.

Overall, I'm pleased with the shawl. I used the yarn that my husband brought back from China. It's 100% superwash wool. I found that out after trying to spit splice it. After blocking, the yarn has a metallic silver-y look to it. It looks very elegant and delicate.

Details:
Pattern:Queen Silvia Shawl from Knitted Lace of Estonia
Yarn: Hengyuanxiang knitting wool--94 gms used
Needle: size 3 (3.25mm) Knit Picks Harmony
Size: 25 inches wide and 72 inches long blocked
Start: November 19, 2008
Finish: January 4, 2009

My next project is the Snow Flurries Wrap and I'm knitting with boucle yarn. Boucle yarn is evil. It looks so pretty, but it's a complete PITA to knit. The little loops get caught on everything--needles, jewelry, rough fingernails, etc. I love the look of the wrap, so I'm going to "tough it out" as Dwight would say.

For this year(hopefully), I'm trying to knit from stash. Queen Silvia used up almost all of my leftover HYX gray yarn. The boucle yarn is from stash. I have a lot of leftover lace yarns that are probably enough to make scarves. That will be on the list for this year. I might try to use those with my leftover beads too. I'm not even going to mention my sock yarn stash. My project list keeps growing...