Truly, it's not really a masterpiece but, that sounded good didn't it? Oh, to be the Michelangelo of the knitting world! I suppose that will have to wait. Guess I better get back to the reality of it all...
This shawl began last week as a creative attempt in crochet. I found a beautiful pattern for a triangular shawl. Honestly, I tried to stick to the pattern. Promise. However, when I got to the 4th step I was lost. It looked and sounded complicated. There was no way that I could wrap my mind around that concept. Rather than give up on the start I had, I messed around a bit with the original stitches, to no avail.
Unraveling that bit led me to another attempt at a triangular shawl. This one was shear imagination on my part. It started well, but I landed in the place of "I should've increased more" once again. My mother, who was sitting nearby crocheting her heart out, told me to give up and unravel it. Not being a quitter by nature, I staunchly refused and kept going.
Two days later I was racking my brain for ideas on how to salvage what would've been a fantastic shawl, had I only changed the increase rate. I began to improvise with rotation and addition along the sides, which looked good (for a while). Somehow I ended up with what appeared to be a VERY large thong - definitely NOT what I was looking for. Resigning to failure, I begrudgingly unraveled the "thong" and quickly resolved to complete a shawl on my new knitting machine.
After letting the yarn relax overnight, I began the process loading the machine. Four hours later I had a complete shawl base. Please note that the four hour time frame includes a forty-five minute learning allowance for me. I wanted to attempt a cabled edge at either side of the shawl. It worked fairly well, although there was a step that I neglected to follow through with. That step would've made the cable a bit more pronounced. (The recommendation was to remove the stitches on either side of the cable. By then I was afraid to ruin this project again, so I skipped that part.)
The effect is nice, even though the cable is not as raised as one would expect it to be. The yarn used is a basic white cotton by Lily. Normally, it would be used for washcloths or rugs, but someone donated it to the prayer shawl ministry. Ideally, it will become a super soft, durable shawl for someone!
The following morning the fringe was added. I felt that the width of the shawl was a bit shorter than I'd hoped. It was a little hard to properly gauge the length while knitting the shawl as you have to roll the fabric in on itself to keep the weight properly balanced. The fringe helped with this matter.
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