Sunday, April 22, 2007

"Simple" Lace Relief Knitting (The Spider Queen Shawl)


Now that the Flower Basket Shawl is done, I needed another "simple" project I could rotate with Wedding Ring Shawl (I'm on row 17 of the endless border). I am knitting again on Peacock Feathers after neglecting it for months and months. I guess my snit over having to pick back is over. And I'm knitting on the Shetland Tea Shawl and on Boundary Waters as well but I needed one more. I like to have five or six projects going so I always have something at different levels to knit. I don't know about everyone else, but when I don't have something to knit, I tend to read . Once I get on a reading jag, no knitting gets done. I do spin, but it's more like 30 minutes or so of spinning laceweight singles and that takes forever to get done so it hardly counts as an activity. I decided that I needed to use that 55/45 cashmere silk yarn I dyed rather than go for another gossamer weight shawl so I'm using it to knit The Spider Queen shawl by Hazel Carter. Knit on US 2 needles. I decided on the heavier weight yarn so that the shawl can take a little wear. If you check out fleegles blog you can see her "Spider King" shawl which her version of this shawl using a different border. It's really beautiful and she's decided on a finer yarn than what I'm using. For anyone considering a first effort into Shetland Lace types of knitting, this would not be a bad choice at all. You would have to have some experience with knitting other lace first but it's really a nice and easy knit so far. After looking at the changes that fleegle has made to her version of the shawl, I have started to wonder if I should also change mine. There is always something to be said for knitting a pattern as given. It's another "notch" in the knitting belt so to speak, but when I look at that border, I do admit it's a little odd. Oh well. I have time to consider it. I have Hazel Carters book on Shetland Lace Knitting From Charts and maybe I can do something a little different using that. Hope everyone's knitting is going well !