Shawl Swatch

Well I finally finished the swatch for my lace shawl. I did go to Mahone Bay on Sunday and picked up some round Bamboo needles and things went much better. I think the Addi Turbos were just so slippery and the yarn was so fine, that the stitches just kept falling off!! It all worked fine with the bamboo ones. Here is a picture of the swatch:


It is called Lily of the Valley and that is what the nupps are supposed to look like. I googled nupps and came up with lots of good advice. Using a smaller dp needle for picking up the nupp on the purl row works really well, and also, when making the nupp, adding 5 instead of 7 stitches makes it easier and it is virtually impossible to notice the difference!! Yea!

So having reached this pinnacle of success after so many attempts, I decided to start the shawl proper. Right from the start there was another new technique....the provisional cast on!! I read the instructions and went online and googled provisional cast on and came up with enough info to make the attempt. And instead of doing another practice swatch, I chose to cast on all 137 stitches for the shawl and just do it. I have 24 rows done with 4 more to go before I castoff for the edge and then pick up the stitches from the provisional cast on row. I am hoping against hope that it works and I don't have to start from scratch again!!

Last night I went to the movie, The Devil Wears Prada, with a couple of friends. We all really enjoyed it and Meryl Streep was wonderful. We decided it should get 2 1/2 stars.

I am off to town shortly for lunch with my friends and some errands and then home to hopefully watch Wimbledon, they are in a rain delay, and knit some more. Dorothy is coming by late this afternoon to pick up my odds and ends of yarn to knit more finger puppets. That makes me feel better about all my yarn. I know I will never use it and I hate to throw it out, so this is perfect! Win! Win!


Bye bye for now!!