Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Christmas knitting

Technically, this is birthday knitting, but since my stepmom's birthday is December 25...

here is her present, agonizingly kept secret through a massive test of the my will, when all I wanted to do is shout from the rooftops "I DID A LACE PROJECT AND IT TURNED OUT!!!" But I had to wait until it was delivered and opened, you know. Then I got a cold and -

!!!

My history with lace is a long and frustrating one, and it seems that the last couple of projects have got me over the hump. I am not going to tackle a cobweb shawl any time soon, but I am sure a lot less afraid of it than I was.

This is the Autumn Leaves Stole by the wonderfully talented Jared Flood of Brooklyn Tweed. (I'm linking to his blog instead of Ravelry because I love his narrative about the pattern. His pattern writing is really clear, just detailed enough, and utterly awesome.

Here it is all bundled up after blocking and finishing. This is really the true color of the yarn:
Autumn Leaves Stole - actual color

Here's a shot of about a quarter of it. At the bottom you can see the row of leaves with no stems...that's the seam row.
Autumn Leaves Stole folded

followed by a close up of the small leaves (up near the neck)
Autumn Leaves Stole - small leaves

and the larger leaves (down near the edges).
Autumn Leaves Stole - big leaves

And one more pretty picture just for the sake of prettiness. Don't you think life should just plain have more pretty in it? I do!
Autumn Leaves Stole

I used Cascade 220 in a lovely emeraldy-teal color (chosen rather competently by my dad, GO DAD!). The color literally looked different in every shot I took of it. It took a week to knit each half and a few tense hours on a Sunday afternoon to kitchener stitch the two halves together. A quick soak, a lot of pinning - this thing is 19" x 72"- a little supervision by my kitty Fee (she kept monitoring it to make sure it was all right I guess) and there it was.

Not bad for two and a half weeks, and my last knit project of 2010. I'm one of those people who couldn't wait to see 2010 leave and 2011 come in. Except for this. Hope you all like it. My stepmom does & I'm so glad. Happy birthday, Donna! You are completely awesome.

1 Comments:

Blogger Beverly said...

It's beautiful!

4:01 PM  

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