It's a Year of Lace

Last year I overdosed on sweaters. This year is a year for working through my lace stash. Over on Ravelry I joined the 10 Shawls in 2010 group and am working away on my 10. I think I have laceweight stash to get me through at least the first 8 and I definitely have sock yarn that would work for the other two. The rules are simple. Each shawl has to use at least 250m of yarn and 2 of the 10 must use at least 500m. The shawls can be any shape, but they must be started and finished within the calendar year 2010. Piece of cake! My first shawl of the year is already complete.

Project: Feather Duster, by Susan Lawrence

Yarn: Schulana Kid Seta Lux (293m used by weight = 321 yards)

Needles: US 7 (4.5mm)

Start/Finish: 2 Jan 2010 - 15 Jan 2010

Notes: The yarn was a complete impulse buy just after Thanksgiving. Two balls of this lovely gray with silver thread jumped into my basket and begged to come home with me. This yarn is similar to Kid Silk Haze (a.k.a. crack). It is light and airy and just plain fun to use. It is an absolute bear to unknit so I was very glad that I made few errors (that I caught and needed to repair). The pattern was one that I had loved ever since Susan first posted it. After I bought the yarn and decided that it would be perfect for this pattern, Susan made the generous gesture of offering donations to the Red Scarf Project for purchases of her patterns during a certain timeframe that happened to coincide perfectly with the time when I decided to buy the pattern! See, it was charity! In any case, I got a great (and well-written) pattern, a worthy cause got a donation, and I ended up with a beautiful shawl. Obviously, I was the big winner this time. Originally, I planned to knit this for holiday garb. As it turned out, I didn't go anywhere to need something like this and felt too rotten to knit then. So, again, fate worked in my favor and I didn't cast on until after the first of the year.

After all that good luck, I very nearly messed up the blocking. Most of the shawls I have knit have very sharp points on the lower edge. I initially blocked this one with points and then wondered what was wrong. It didn't dawn on my until I was in bed that night that I had blocked it incorrectly. Of course, I couldn't sleep until I got up and fixed it! Sometimes obsession is no fun at all.