Ta da!

I think by now you all know that Tracey and I agreed on a swap recently, after a recent throwaway comment of hers that she needed a shawl to warm her poor cold shoulders.

Well, today was Arrival of the Swap Parcels Day. I came home from work to find this quilt waiting for me. I know! How lucky am I? I'll try and photograph it myself over the weekend when I have some daylight hours at home, but in the meantime, I'll show you the finished product of what I sent her.



The pattern is the Shetland Triangle (because 2270 other people can't be wrong), and it's my very first lace shawl. Talk about hooked. I've been queueing lace shawls on Ravelry ever since.



It's a nice sized shawl ... not too big, so it can be worn as a scarf or kerchief if preferred.



It's light and floaty. Perfect for tropical Queensland evenings (I hope).



The yarn is my own hand dyed sock yarn, and I managed to squeeze nine repeats of the body pattern before starting the edging. (Actually I knitted ten repeats, and halfway through the edging realised I was running out of yarn so spent a tedious hour unravelling several hours worth of work).



And for those non-knitterly types of you who asked in the comments what blocking is, and why one does it? Have a look at the two pictures below. When you knit lace, it's all scrunched up and kind of sad looking, so you wet it and manhandle it into position with sharp implements pin it out to open up the exquisite lace pattern. Once dry, the yarn holds the memory of its trauma shaping, and obediently cowers to your will maintains its shape.



See? Obedient.

This was an all round wonderful experience. I thoroughly enjoyed knitting the shawl, although I was nervous about whether someone else would like the finished product as much as I do. I learned to really 'read' my knitting too, relying less on the charts and more on the stitches to know what came next. I was a little scared of doing something as large and challenging, but knowing Tracey lives in the tropics and a heavier shawl would not be appropriate, gave me the impetus to give lace a whirl. I'm so glad I did. It turned out to be interesting to knit, but an easy pattern.

And I love the finished result. It should be in Tracey's hot little hands by now, and I hope she likes it as much as I do. I certainly adore my quilt, and can't wait to show you lot in a day or so.

(Vital statistics of the shawl ravelled.)