My fingers are smokin’!

Two weeks ago the ladies at my knitting group were talking about doing a lace knit along. I was like yay! I love lace! But then I remembered all my projects I have in progress and I was all like boo! I can not start another one right now. And then I remember hey! I have a lace project started with AMAZING yarn that I am not knitting. So I started asking myself why I was not knitting it. I looked at the pattern again and I liked it pretty good. I looked at other lace patterns to think maybe I needed to rip it and do something new to get excited about it. But I ran into similar problems of the first time determining what to knit where I have 700 yds which seems to be an odd amount for a shawl.

Oh, to bring you up to speed this is what I am talking about my Mooi lace shawl. I started it way back in May on my second trip to China. It is the Hanami Stole by Melanie Gibbons and I am using my Louet Mooi Laceweight that is gorgeous.

So, after lots of hemming and hawing and Ravelrying I decided, hey I should maybe actually get it out and look at it again after the whole summer of not knitting it (duh)! So I did. And I realized I still really liked the pattern and especially the way I would be able to use up every inch of yarn! And I was sad the yarn had been sitting there not getting any attention.

So a week and a half ago the shawl still looked like this:

And then I got really excited about the idea of having it done to wear for my dear friend Amanda’s wedding back in Wisconsin which is happening this Friday (less than 48 hours from now). So, I got to work and man did I fly! I can not believe I did it! I was thinking how I was going to block it on the bed before the wedding, because I would have to finish it on the airplane but low and behold tonight I blocked her!

My modifications include:

• Just a regular old cast on
• After the end of the basket weave half I had about 2 feet of yarn left and put the half on a holder for later
• I started the blossom half from the opposite end with a regular old cast on and then worked the charts backwards
• The last chart with the densest blossoms I worked for half the rows because I liked the look better
• I continued until I had just enough yarn left to kitchener the two halves together
• I kitchenered them together and only had a bit of yarn left!

It is blocking right now, and I can not wait to wear it on Friday.  I plan to get some better pictures taken this weekend and will get those up shortly.

So here is all the yarn that remained after the kitchener:

Here is the middle where it was seamed and the two patterns transition:

The blossom end:

The basket end: