Rainbow Chills

I've finished the snowdrop shawl.

I blocked it last night and am thrilled with the result.

Thank you Steph, for a great pattern!

I can't believe how different the shawl looks now that it is blocked. The lace is just gorgeous!

Cathy has been having contractions over the past 24 hours and I'm so thrilled that I finished this project in time to take it to the hospital when little Eve arrives!

Thanks for all the supportive comments through my first lace project!

Click on the photo to see a blocking picture and a close-up shot!

I timed it this morning and it's taking me about 10 minutes per row.

I've got 38 rows left. That's 380 minutes. Six hours and twenty minutes. Before bind off. No edging. I can totally do this!

The goal for today is to complete 16 rows. Four on my lunch today (40 minutes) and twelve tonight (2 hours).

At this point, I've knitted two rows of the latest 16 row repeat.

I've got 8 snowdrops on each side, 7 solid blocks across the center.

Last night, I did a little surgery on one of the edge snowdrops. When I look at it, I can tell it's different. When you look at the shawl as a whole, your eye is not drawn to that section. That's good enough for me.

I don't know what I did but something had gone wonky and I had too many stitches between snowdrops. Instead of tinking back a few rows to get it right. I dropped five stitches down and did some creative fixing.

I may show you a picture. But probably not. I'd prefer to pretend it's perfect!

Oh, and yes, I do realize that as I progress, each row is going to take a slightly longer amount of time and my calculation is probably off. But let me delude myself into thinking I've got less than seven hours of work left on this.

Okay?

That's the detail of the shawl. I'm now starting to create the solid triangle in the center of the shawl. At this point, there are 16 snowdrops across with 5 stitches of solid knitting in the center.

At this point, each row takes several minutes. While I feel as though I have made great progress in the past few days, there are many more hours of knitting to go into this project.

I am planning on emailing Steph today. The directions on when to stop knitting and start binding off are a bit unclear and while I think I know what I need to do, I can see how it could be confusing for people. Does anyone know if other knitters have made this?

This is my primary knitting right now- at least two hours a day. Hopefully, my sister won't go into labor early!

I'm still undecided about the edging. I don't know if my crochet skills are good enough to go with a crochet edging. I'm just going to wait until the main knitting is complete and decide how I like it then.

I'm still open to suggestions though.

Update with photo!

I've added the 12th and 13th snowdrops. You can see that I did have a little issue with the border on the right side. I'm hoping that

1. the center portion will be so stunning that no one will notice
2. the blocking will sharpen things up and make this less noticable (I'm realizing that the opposite may happen but I refuse to rip!)

I haven't worked on this since Monday but I'm happy with how it's coming and I think it's moving along at a nice pace. Hooray!

The pattern is very easy to follow. I'm doing well despite this being my first big lace project. As I progress, I am less nervous about the non-charted directions for making a solid triangle in the top center of the shawl.

I'm debating about adding an edging. Stephanie has given directions for adding one. I'm a little reluctant to commit to picking up 400+ stitches. Michelle is not sure she even likes the edging. I don't feel one way or the other about it.

Edging suggestions?

 

I have not touched this shawl since before vacation. I had it in my mind that it was knitting to be done without distraction and I have just been unable to find distraction-less time to work on it.
 
My anxiety was up this weekend so on Saturday, I shut myself in the bedroom, put on the video of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 50th Birthday Celebration, and got to work.
 
Guess what?
 
I get it. I totally get it. This pattern is made up of a four row repeat. Two of those rows are the same. I finally figured out what I'm doing. I can READ the lace now and know what I should be doing next and where I am in the pattern without stitch markers and post-it notes and who knows what.
 
I GET IT!
 
Now, to be be totally honest, it was work. I spent at least an hour Saturday taking stitches out and redoing them. And then again. It took forever. But I  get it now. I was able to work on this on Sunday while I watched the West Wing on dvd. No mistakes.
 
AMAZING!
 
The shawl currently has 9 snowdrops. When I add numbers 14 and 15 (I think), I'll start the solid bit in the middle. Moving right along!