KNITSTER

Well, if you are a diehard knitter who has more advanced skills than I do, perhaps you aren’t crazy. But for me, I added something to my queue on Ravelry…and in reality…as something that I wanted to do. It’s the first time I actually bought a pattern for something that didn’t come out of a knitting book of some sort or a free pattern from the web. This is it:

It’s called the “Mystic Waters Shawl” by Anna Dalvi, a Swedish-Canadian knitter. What I love about the look of this shawl is that it’s not…frou-frou looking. It’s not flowers and girly stuff, but rather geometric and organic, yet still feminine. That’s more my style.

Oddly enough, I am not making this for myself. I had the crazy idea that I am going to try to make this for my future SIL in an off-white color instead. I don’t know why I thought of it this way, but I did. But what’s crazier is that I’ve really hardly done anything lace-like before, let alone used laceweight yarn. I went to the Wooly Lamb last night, as it’s their 5th anniversary, and they are having some big sales there this week. They had something whereby you could go and pick a slip, and it would give you how much your discount would be. I was wishing for a big number, but as usual my luck was just okay, and I got a 25% one off, which is still not too bad. The problem too is that I still wanted to keep the yarn in my budget, and there wasn’t a lot of laceweight yarn to my liking, or else if there was, it was WAY expensive. I finally found something that I think will do, and I bought 3 skeins of Classic Elite Yarns’ Silky Alpaca Lace in Natural. My friend Sandy had some along, but she was saying that she didn’t understand why I just didn’t go to Michael’s to get the yarn. I had to explain that it’s the same reason she goes to the specialty quilt store next to the Wooly Lamb and not to the local JoAnn’s– better selection and quality. They don’t have laceweight yarn at Michael’s, let alone something that’s 70% alpaca and 30% silk!

Yes, I think I’m crazy to try to attempt this at all. But it’s pretty and if I can get through it, it will be like climbing a big mountain like Killimanjaro– a HUGE accomplishment. And I think my future SIL will like it. While I’ve only met her once, through my brother’s description of her design tastes and such, I think her tastes are similar to mine– she likes feminine, but not overly girly, and appreciates something that’s organic and geometric than flowery.

I don’t know when I’ll cast this one on…I’m still working on the Harry Potter’s Hedwig for Drew, and I have some sewing projects that I’m behind on, but hopefully I will this summer.

ETA - After looking at the whole pattern, I think I’ll be making the “small” size, which is still a good shoulder wrap size. The one shown in the photo is the “large” size, and I think it’s a little way too big. Yeah, the small one will suffice. And oh, if my eyes don’t get buggy from the charts, I’ll be surprised.

Posted on May 23rd, 2008 by Dani
Filed under: Patterns, Photos, Projects, Works in Progress