With the cold weather, the still shorter days and basketball season going on right now, I've been knitting up a storm. In this post, I'm going to share my Flowsaic Shawl. The Flowsaic Shawl is the first project in this year's N Club with Laura Nelkin. In the N Club, we paid last year to join, and this year will receive three surprise knitting kits with all of the supplies for three larger knitting projects. There is also a private Facebook group and a Ravelry group where we can share our progress and ask questions with others in the club.
For the first project, we had a choice of either the Flowsaic Shawl or the Flowsaic Cowl/Poncho. I decided to go with the shawl since that seemed like a more useful shape for me. This project is made with a beautiful self-striping yarn that was dyed specially for this project. I didn't think to take a picture of the hank before winding, but here it is early on in the project:
It was fun to knit along and watch the colors change.
If you look closely at the photo, you will see some blue threads woven in the knitting near the end where I'm working. These are life lines and can be used to easily unknit a portion of the project back to a known point if you make an error that you can't fix. I hear about people using dental floss for their life lines, but I had trouble finding unwaxed dental floss at a reasonable price so I looked around an realized that cheap crochet thread would work well for this, so that's what I use. It's nice because it's thin and smooth, like you need for a life line, but it also comes in lots of colors so you can always find a color that contrasts with your knitting.
Since this was a group knit, my competitive nature came out and I worked on it every spare minute that I had so that I wouldn't get too far behind those crazy fast knitters out there. I'm proud to say that I was able to finish my shawl in 14 days! I loved the feel of the shawl when I was finished! Here are some pictures of it when I was done knitting:
The next step was to block it to bring out the stitch pattern. Here it is after the blocking:
It's kind of amazing how different the shawl is after blocking! I think the stitch pattern is beautiful and really shows up now. But the shawl is a lot thinner and lighter after the blocking, which I did pretty aggressively. I'm not sure how to wear it now. So, I think I might reblock the shawl less aggressively to get it back to its original shape and then I can wear it like a scarf with a wide end. But I'm leaving it as is for now so I can think about it before messing with it anymore. Either way, I think it turned out beautiful and I'm very proud of it!
Nancy
The stitch pattern is beautiful and the yarn is luscious. It must have been a reward to reveal each color! I don't know how you would wear it either. . .it has a different shape. What did some in your group do?
ReplyDeleteI actually asked the group for ideas on how to wear it, but nobody responded. I think everyone is a bit puzzled with this one! If I reblock it, then it'll be narrower and can be worn like a scarf with the wide end on one shoulder and cascading down the front. That's how the designer modeled it for us.
ReplyDelete