The Miracle of Blocking

Blocking is the key to a great shawl -- especially a lacey one. There are many tutorials online, but here's one that explains things well, with lots of pictures.

I finished my Little Acorn Leaves Shawl (ravelry link) and, let's face it, it looked like a wadded up blob of yarn.

After soaking in a bath of Soak and cold water, I spread it out, pinned it every few inches, and let it dry on my blocking mats.

After drying for a few hours -- it turned into a beautiful lacey drapey shawl. Blocking is a miracle.

This is yarn from my Foxfire Fiber and Designs 2009 Sheep Shares. It's Cormo Alpaca lace in the color acorn. The color is actually best is the middle picture.

Ravelympics -- First Medal

My first Ravelympics project was the Traveling Woman shawl entered in the short track shawl event. I started on 14 Feb and bound off on 21 Feb. Success -- badge, if not medal, worthy.

I entered this for Team Squint Squad (for all you Bones fans) and knit it in this color because it made me think of Angela Montenegro (from the TV show Bones). The yarn is Asian Trends Santa Fe -- a nice dense yarn -- great for a small shawl.

When I was done, I had about 9 grams of yarn left. Too much. I like to finish with just a tiny bit left -- enough to fix any holes that might appear, but no more. So after it was bound off and done -- I took it apart and added about a dozen more rows (reversing the pattern) till I ran out of yarn. Perfect. About three yards left. Can't get much better.

One of 10 in 2010

I signed up for the 10 shawls in 2010 challenge on Ravelry. Probably crazy because I'm not the speediest knitter around. While others have already finished three or four.....I just finished my first. And it was an easy one. I have to remind myself that "slow and steady wins the race."

My first of the year is the ubiquitous Citron (there are 1408 Citron projects on Ravelry right now). Mine is a butter yellow in Malabrigo lace weight yarn. Very soft. Very dainty. And very, very petite. I haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do with it. Maybe I'll put it my "gift closet." Ha ha -- that's shopping channel speak -- they always try to get you to buy something and put it away for future gifting. Does anyone really do that? Whenever I do, I forget about it. I wouldn't want to forget about something that took me about a month to make!