Here is a photo of the yarns that I will combine for the project that I described in the last post. There are two shades of Debbie Bliss Angel and two of Skaska lace weight merino. Mmmmm.
I just love blocking lace! And whatever others may say, I do enjoy knitting lace with this yarn. While it has shrunk back a bit, I think it is no more than I would expect. I used a 3.5 mm (3 US) needle. Before blocking, the piece measured about 16x16 inches. Here it is in a field of Veronica... Pinned out, it measured about 29x29 inches. I left it to try overnight, unpinned it in the morning and it immediately shrunk 1 inch to 28x28. I left it undisturbed for another 8 hours. It shrunk back one more inch in that time, to 27x27. When I returned from work, I could resist no longer and took it for another whirl in the garden. I just measured again and it is now 26x26 inches. The bumps that you can see in the first picture show no signs of re-appearing. For now, I have a 60% increase in size from the unblocked state. Quite respectable, but I will check again in the morning. Now, I'll get back to the pink blanket. PS. No one has guessed the answer to yesterday's question correctly
...I went into the sunny garden, barefoot with my shawl and did dirty things with my socks in the name of knitting. Really, I just put them over the ends of these bench legs so the Diamond Fir Cone wouldn't get messed up while I draped it there for photographs. I was desperately trying to get good pictures of the shadows of the lace. This small shawl really does want to be a diamond rather than a square. The fir cone motif is 2 holes by 4 holes and so it stretches more in one direction than the other. I have high hopes for a second shawl with the same centre. I'm going to give it a bigger border. This one has a few rows of garter stitch with a row of holes in the middle before geing finished with Sharon Miller's Doris edging. I wanted to keep it fairly small as it is a present for my petite stepmother for her 90th birthday. But this was my birthday so I took it for a whirl. Slide show here (26 seconds, no music): Then I came inside, put on my favorite socks and ate cake.
Comments