Silk Road

The first pattern in the Kitman Figueroa shawl club was Silk Road. Inspired by some other knitters' use of beads on this shawl I decided to use 8/0 beads to cover up the yarn overs in the narrow columns that run through the pattern. The combination of fingering weight yarn and small beads did not lend itself to using a crochet hook, so I ended up using a piece of jewelry wire (in the same way some knitters use dental floss) to slip the beads on. About 15% of the beads, which turned out to have somewhat nonuniform hole sizes, refused to fit on the stitches, but luckily most of them worked out. I was somewhat relieved at the end of the shawl that the bead fitting was over. For the yarn I used Cephalopod Yarns Skinny Bugga, which is a lovely yarn choice for soft and drapy shawls, but, unfortunately, discontinued. I have a decent stash of it left, though, so I will be using it for as long as it lasts.

The Ravelry project