Damask

After developing a craving for a slightly more complicated, all-over lace shawl pattern, I cast on my first Kitman Figueroa pattern, Damask. Either I'm getting more comfortable with complex shawls, or this is one of those patterns that looks more complicated than it is, but I found it surprisingly enjoyable and relaxing to knit.

I think one of my key choices to success was to pick a non-splitty yarn, Skinny Bugga! by Cephalopod Yarns, and pointy needles to handle all those purl 7 together nupp stitches, since they turned out to be relatively painless. I also wanted a saturated color, although a more solid color might have been optimal. The slight variegation in the yarn is not as obvious in the photos as it is in person.

What makes the pattern different from most triangular shawls is that it's knit from the bottom up, so rows get shorter and shorter the further you get, as opposed to longer, so when you get anxious to finish it, it seems to, gratifyingly, progress faster and faster. I knit the medium size. The small one would definitely have been too small. I may knit the larger size some time in the future.

The Ravelry project page

Ishbel #4

The other one of the small shawls promised for my co-worker Marjaana is my fourth Ishbel. I think the madelinetosh tosh sock in the colorway Duchess works particularly well with the pattern. The fourth time around it was a quick knit, and this small version of the shawl only used up 270 meters of yarn, anyway. Maybe one day I will knit the larger version, but at the moment I have so many other shawl patterns in my queue that a fifth Ishbel will have to wait. It's one of those insanely popular patterns on Ravelry, and I guess I have no basis for questining the popularity, having contributed my own fair share of projects.

The Ravelry project page

Lyrica Euterpe

Lyrica Euterpe from Romi Hill's pattern collection 7 Small Shawls; Year Two: The Muses was a new experience for me in the way that this was the first time I've used beads on a shawl. And I love the beads along the edging, they are like dew drops! What I also love about this pattern is the shape, a shallow triangle, without a center spine. What I did not love about knitting this were the smocking stitches, particularly with Wollmeise Pure, which is a somewhat splitty yarn. What I also didn't love about this project was my choice of yarn color: I think the WD Meilenstein is too variegated for this. This is about the maximum amount of variegation I can tolerate in a yarn, but at this level it's usually best in garter stitch. But, overall, I'm still mostly satisfied with the end product. And it is the 11th shawl for the 12 shawls in 2012 knit-along. I did not expect to be this close to completion so early in the year.

The Ravelry project page