I'm slightly in mourning. I finished my Flukra shawl, and I miss knitting on it!
We had some slightly lame snow this afternoon, so took the opportunity to get some apt pictures of this lovely shawl. (Flukra means snow falling in large flakes.)
This was such a satisfying project. It was the perfect combination of great pattern and great yarn.
I worked on the central garter stitch triangle over the Christmas break. It was my mindless knitting in between 1x1 rib while I was chatting with family over the holidays. The garter stitch grew fairly slowly, but I was working on other things at the same time, so it never got to the point where I was bored.
Then came the excitement of the lace pattern. It's a design with lace stitches on both RS and WS rows, and many people put off trying this type of design over fear that it's too difficult, and certainly more difficult than designs where you have a plain knit or purl row between lace rows. I must argue that the reverse is actually true!
Although you can't switch off with a plain row, the rhythm generated by staying in pattern on every row helps to build momentum. On top of that, if you do make an error, you can almost instantly see that the pattern isn't lining up as it should. Thus you only need to tink back part of a row to fix the error (and sometimes no tinking's needed at all - if you've just missed a yarnover, you can pick up the thread between sts to replace it). In the same situation on a lace knitting design (one with patterning on alternate rows), you would need to unpick the whole plain row as well as the partial lace rows.
Flukra's construction kept me interested as I worked. The garter stitch triangle was over before I got bored, and then the lace border was just the perfect length (it only took 4 or 5 evenings to complete), followed by the edging which was just 2 evening's work. I'm sad that it's complete. I need to find a new project that will be just as fulfilling! Maybe I'll head over to The Shetland Trader and check out some more of Gudrun's gorgeous designs...
The lace yarn was also particularly lovely to work with. It's a 100% Blue-Faced Leicester Wool laceweight from Yarnscape, and the shawl used just 55g of yarn. The dyeing is in just my colours, with a tiny bit of variation between blues and teals. It's just enough to add depth, but not enough to distract from the lace pattern. Really, really pretty!
If I wasn't on a stash-down, then I would definitely be buying up some more of Alison's lovely yarns. Sigh. I must stay strong, but you don't need to... :-)
