A Finished Item and An Update

I finished my oldest project. This was a Pi shaped shawl that I started in March 2019 and when I missed various Pi dates I gave up finishing it on a special day and knew it would be finished eventually. The edging took a long time because it was fiddly and boring. A 20-row repeat with 5 beads on every wrong side row, knitted sideways and attached to the shawl as you worked. And, of course, once the knitting was completed I had to block the shawl. It was already big before blocking and I knew I would need space and time to do it. I finally had the time last week, space was more difficult but achieved.

I love it! The yarn is 70% merino/30% silk lace weight yarn and the beads add some weight. The beads were purchased from Fusion Beads. And they turned out just the right colour; which is always a risk when purchasing on line. As I didn’t know if the beads would be damaged by water, rather than soaking the shawl and then pinning it out, I pinned out the shawl and then sprayed it. This worked very well and meant I was not working with a damp object. The shawl did not need blocking to be made bigger, just to show off the design.

I really like gradient yarns but am disappointed in the yardage. This was a set of four skeins, each just under 300 metres. I worked until I ran out of yarn and then started the next skein. I started the edging with the fourth colour and had just enough to finish. (Which was a relief. Although I had about half of the third colour left, I did not want a two colour border.)

 

And now for an update on my WIPs. When the challenge started at the end of September, I had ten WIPs, after finishing this shawl, I am down to six. Three of them I am not going to get finished by the end of the year. One is the cardigan that I have put to one side, one is a crochet project which I do not work on very often but I have decided that I want the finished item, and the other is the complicated lace Advent shawl. Although I thought I could get that finished I was not happy with the commitment of working on it every day. I thought about frogging it, but looking at pictures of finished ones, it is very beautiful when blocked.

Of the three remaining, the simple project is very close to being finished, maybe the knitting will be completed this week. I decided how to join the quarantine squares and I have been working away on those. Depending on how wide a border I decide to add, this might be finished by the end of the year. The final project is the Palm Springs project which I did work on quite a bit when we went away and might get finished on our next trip.