Falling Leaves Shrug - Swatching Lace

The really exciting development is that I'm working on a design.  The basic construction is inspired by the Traveling Shawl pattern, but I wanted to do it in lace, and a Unique Sheep Gradiance.  I've been looking for suitable lace motifs for a little while now, and finally found them this week.  Interestingly enough, I found them in the very first knitting book that I bought How to Knit by Debbie Bliss.  I pulled my copy out to give to a friend that wants to learn, and ordered another copy for myself after leafing through it and reminding myself what a nice book it is.  Last night I pulled out my bag of leftover balls of Verve yarn and knit up a sample.

There were a couple of things I was figuring out - the biggest was how to work the pick for the lace panels that come off the sides of the central panel.  The bottom panel was knit after picking up a stitch for every other row (one stitch per slipped stitch side loop).  That was obviously too tight.  When I started the top panel I initially picked up two stitches in each side loop - knit-front-back - but after working a couple of rows it was obvious that there would be too many stitches to block out properly so I frogged and redid the start.  This time I did an initial pick up of one stitch per side loop, then on the return wrong side row I increased every other stitch, but using the knit-front-slip-back.  I also played around with my double decreases.  I like the central-double-decrease as it gives a more distinct line.  I'm not sure if I'm going to include any beads.

The yarn I'm going to use is the first shipment for The Unique Sheep's Mythical Shawls Club.  I had done the test knit and didn't feel like knitting the shawl again, but I love the colorway, and it was, in fact, part of the inspiration for this design.

Pattern:  Falling Leaves Shrug by Carolyn Blakelock
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Verve in Verdandi
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)