Galadriel's Mirror - Finished!

This past weekend we went to Tennessee for a family reunion (on Bruce's side).  I took this project along to work on as I only had about half of chart 5 to complete.  I knit about half of the remaining rows on the drive there and knit the rest the next day at the reunion itself.  I staked out a rocking chair on the screened in porch and settled in for some serious knitting.  I did not do the looped bind off called for in the pattern, opting instead for a standard lace bind off.  There were a couple of reasons for this - one was that the looped bind off really didn't seem to be part of the overall lace pattern - you just crocheted 6 and then crochet through 3 stitches.  If the bind off had actually been part of the pattern, the way it is for Rosemary Hill's Fiori di Sole I might have done it but I didn't understand why you would go through all that trouble to create the elaborate lattice work only to close it up with the bind off.  The other reason I went with a simple lace bind off is that I was running low on yarn and didn't want to get part way through only to run out.  As it was, I ended up with 4 grams left.

The room that I block in doesn't get direct sunlight, but I wanted to get a blocking picture, just to show how I pinned it out - so I turned on a light and used the flash.  The last half of Chart 5 you're increasing more than just 2 stitches, so you get a ruffle effect.  I probably could have made it more ruffly than I did.

I blocked it after we got back yesterday and I accidentally laid it out right side down, so this is actually the wrong side, but with the way Susan Pandorf's designs are - highly textured - they look good from either side.

Here is a slightly closer shot so you can really appreciate the texture of this amazing design.

I replaced the bobbles with beads.  As you can tell from the first photo, this is a large shawl - about a 7 foot wingspan, and about 40 inches deep.  I used about 340 grams of yarn or about 1240 yards.

Project:  Galadriel's Mirror by Susan Pandorf (from The Fellowship of the Ring Series)
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Tinsel Toes in Silverlode
Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm

Galadriel's Mirror - Chart 3 Done

This was a long chart, consuming 92 grams of yarn - the rest of skein 1, all of skein 2 and almost half of skein 3.  I am glad to be done with this portion of the pattern and all of those wrapped stitches.  I may add beads to the last two charts.

Project:  Galadriel's Mirror by Susan Pandorf (from The Fellowship of the Ring Series)
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Tinsel Toes in Silverlode
Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Galadriel's Mirror - Chart 2 Done - Take Two

I finished re-knitting Chart 2.  It is late enough that I can't get a picture in natural light so I had to take this one on my cutting table down in my studio.  I have "daylight" light bulbs in my studio, so at least the colors are good.  You can see the remnants of the Gr Orange skein.  I started with that skein, which blends nicely into the first skein of the Silverlode set.

Project:  Galadriel's Mirror by Susan Pandorf (from The Fellowship of the Ring Series)
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Tinsel Toes in Silverlode
Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Galadriel's Mirror - Chart 1 Take Two

Last night I decided to start my Galadriel's Mirror over again.  There were a couple of factors that led to my decision.  I had made a couple of mistakes and I had also used a remnant from another gradient set in between my first and second skeins of this set.  I knew that I was going to be very close on my yarn amount and had found a remnant that matched the first skein almost exactly except that it had a bit more of the almost white silver, which led to some pooling that was bugging me a bit.  After I started using the remnant skein I realized that it would have been better to start with that skein so there wouldn't be an "alien" skein in the middle of my Silverlode set.  I pulled the shawl off the needles and took a picture before I started to frog.

Then I frogged back skein 2, and put the rest of the shawl into a bag to catch the beads as I knit the new shawl from the old.

Project:  Galadriel's Mirror by Susan Pandorf (from The Fellowship of the Ring Series)
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Tinsel Toes in Silverlode
Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Galadriel's Mirror - Chart 2 Done

I finished up Chart 2 this morning.  I don't have it on a long enough cable to show the entire shawl, but wanted to at least get past the central spine stitch so you can see the organic way the pattern is emerging as the shawl widens.  I did make a modification to the pattern.  There are supposed to be bobbles in the panels between the main lace motif.  I replaced them with beads and then tweaked the panel.  The original 5 stitch 8 row repeat was as follows:

row 1:  k2tog, yo, p1, yo, ssk
row 2:  p2, k1, p2
row 3:  k2, make bobble, k2
row 4:  p2, k1, p2
row 5:  yo, ssk, p1, k2tog, yo
row 6:  p2, k1, p2
row 7:  k2, p1, k2
row 8:  p2, k1, p2

I replaced that pattern with:

row 1:  k2tog, yo, k1, yo, ssk
row 2:  p5
row 3:  k2, k1 & place bead, k2
row 4:  p5
row 5:  yo, ssk, k1, k2tog, yo
row 6:  p5
row 7:  k1, yo, cdd, yo, k1
row 8:  p5

I removed the central purl stitch because that column of purl stitches swallowed the bead, and then I decided to add the central double decrease to row 7 to make it more texturally interesting, figuring that 3 rows of stockinette stitch would just be too plain.

Chart 3 is more of the same motif, until the last few rows but Charts 4 and 5 get interesting.  I may add beads to the last two charts.

Project:  Galadriel's Mirror by Susan Pandorf (from The Fellowship of the Ring Series)
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Tinsel Toes in Silverlode
Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Galadriel's Mirror - Chart 1 Done

Susan Pandorf of Sunflower Designs has been a major talent in the lace knitting universe for some time now.  I discovered her work soon after I joined Ravelry and it was through her Evenstar and In Dreams Mystery Knit Alongs that I was introduced to The Unique Sheep.  Both of those shawls are part of a series that she has been doing inspired by The Lord of the Rings.  She's been out of the knitting world for a little while now due to some personal issues, but she is coming back and I look forward to seeing what she comes out with as she completes the series.

This pattern is part of The Fellowship of the Rings, the first set of her Lord of the Rings design series.  I've had the yarn in my stash for this project for several years now.  My Camelia Tee is now to the boring stage (endless rounds of stockinette stitch) so I decided to cast on something a little more interesting.  Susan's designs always look complicated because she does a lot of texture, with purls and twisted stitches, which results in dense charts, but they usually are not as hard as they look.  In fact this one is going to get boring as it is basically the motif (which is a thistle flower) that you see in this chart repeated over and over again.  Once I got the hang of the twisted ssk and k2tog things started going pretty quickly.

I am using Silverlode on Tinsel Toes because I felt it would be evocative of Galadriel's mirror.  I've created a spreadsheet of the stitch count and figured out my transition points and of course am weighing my skeins as I wind them and weighing them when I finish each chart.

The biggest challenge that I faced with starting this project was finding the yarn.  When I looked it up on my stash page I was surprised to discover that I had not recorded which box it was in.  I remembered where it had first been stashed, not in a box but in one of those hanging caddies, but it wasn't there so I was faced with figuring out which of the very many boxes it might be in.  I really didn't want to have to search every box that I have because I have quite a few.  In the end I was able to narrow down the search area by using some temporal data.  And once I had narrowed it down to the boxes on a single book shelf I found the yarn very quickly.  I also have some silver-lined crystal AB beads that I am using to replace the bobbles that are called for in later charts.

Project:  Galadriel's Mirror by Susan Pandorf (from The Fellowship of the Ring Series)
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Tinsel Toes in Silverlode
Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)