knitelly

For some time now, I have been planning to knit two lace shawls, one as a present for a friend and another for me to wear at her wedding in the new year. Now, you may be thinking that I'm trying to run before I can walk, because quite clearly, SIX FEET of Cozy doesn't count, what with it being such a simple pattern and all. Aha, but you see, I have been working on a more intricate lace pattern, albeit smaller project, for my secret pal. Obviously, my lips are sealed, but I can confirm that I have been bitten by the lace bug, and I'm very sore.

Of course, I have been desperate to get my hands on Victorian Lace Today, especially since the emphasis is apparently on rectangular shawls (my preference), I have scoured bookshops, I have made B drive me to other, larger bookshops and scoured those, I have telephoned other bookshops, visited LYSs, all to no avail: there isn't a copy of VLT to be had in London. When I first tried to order the book from Amazon UK, the dispatch time was 10-13 days, now it's 6-8 weeks!

With so many beautiful patterns available, in the end I decided on the Forest Canopy Shawl, backed up by these lovely examples here, here and here. This decision was partly influenced by the yarn I wanted to use, Posh Yarn's Lucia in mulberry, a cashmere/merino 4-ply bought months ago, but which just hasn't made it to a pair of socks yet. It is a little heavy for some of the more intricate shawls, but I thought would be perfect for the FCP.

So, after a couple of false starts experiementing with guage, the first night saw me get as far as the picture above. As you can see, it is a relatively simple knit, but not so simple that you can watch CSI at the same time (my yardstick). In the first picture, I've stretched it out a bit so that you can see the pattern, isn't it pretty?. Sorry, the colours aren't true in either picture, have to rely on my mobile till I get batteries for the camera.