Winter Mystery Shawl 2010 - Finished

I finished this up this morning.  The last clue was easy and a pretty quick knit.  I read while purling back on the wrong-side rows.  I only have 38 grams of yarn left over though, which may not be enough to make the fingerless mitts.  And here is a better picture of Miss Chatelaine, looking very Audrey Hepburn.

Miss Chatelaine - Year of Lace 2010 - Finished

I finally finished Miss Chatelaine.  I took her with me down to Florida over Christmas when we went to visit family, and basically spent two days knitting.  I don't think that I have ever spent that much time just knitting lace.  I almost finished her too, but ran out of yarn with one repeat of the edging to go.  And the reason that I ran out of yarns is that I modified the pattern.  The pattern called for knitting both of the edges, repeating the edging pattern 3 times, and then picking up stitches on one of the edging pieces, and grafting the other edging to the body to finish.  There were a number of things about this construction that I didn't like.  1) The pickup stitch count did not evenly go into the number of rows on the edging.  2) Grafting with lace is not my favorite past time.  So, I made some modifications.  First, I did 4 repeats of the edging, this allowed me to pick up every other row for the body, provided I increased the garter stitch edges on the body from 2 stitches to 4 stitches.  When I got to the other edge, all I had to do was knit the edging on to the body.  I knew that I would be very close on yarn, and I almost made it.  I made an appeal on the Year of Lace forum on Ravelry, and one of the group members came to my rescue.

Miss Chatelaine - Year of Lace 2010 - 4 repeats done

I am almost half-way done with this shawl.  I have done 4 of the 9 repeats.  This is the first rectangular shawl that I have done.  An advantage that rectangular shawls have over triangular and circular shawls is that the rows stay the same length, rather than getting longer, and longer, and longer, and, well you get the idea.

The lace pattern is not as hard as it looks, and the yarn is dreamy to work with.  Very soft, and the variegation helps to alleviate the boredom of repeating the same chart 9 times.  This is my "easy" lace project for when my brain gets tired from working on the Fall Mystery Shawl, which is definitely harder.

Miss Chatelaine - Year of Lace 2010

This is the first shawl in the 2010 Year of Lace (the fourth and last shawl will be coming out next month).  I cast this on last weekend and finally finished the first repeat of the body chart.  One of the reasons that I waited on this one was because of the instructions for the construction of the shawl.  You are supposed to knit both edgings, then pick up stitches on one of them for the body and when you get to the other end you are supposed to graft the other edging to the body.  Well, frankly, grafting lace is not my idea of a good time, especially when you have 5 stitches on the edging for every 3 stitches on the body.

I pondered this shawl for a while, and watched what the other folks were doing before I decided to tackle it myself.  The first thing that I did was change how I started the edging.  You're supposed to knit a 2 stitch garter strip and then pick up stitches on the edge of that.  I just did a lace cast on.  I also added an extra repeat of the edging, bringing the row count up to 164, and cast off using a lace cast off.  The pattern called for doing the 2 garter stitch thing again.  I suppose that would have made the edge of the edging match the edging on the body of the shawl, but that really didn't matter to me.  I then picked up every other row for the body, which gave me 82 stitches, and added some extra stitches at the beginning and the end to get me up to 85 stitches - the pattern calls for 81 stitches - so I have 4 garter stitches at each edge, instead of just 2.

The yarn is Audrey,  by Schaeffer Yarn Company.  It is a light fingering/3 ply 50% merino, 50% cultivated silk blend.  It is wonderful to work with, with great stitch definition, and I love the colors.  I have really been drawn to these colors lately.  They just make me feel happy and warm and relaxed.