Edison and Glittering Snowscape Shawls

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well and keeping warm! The arctic air mass hit us today, although we aren't getting it as bad as other places. When we got up this morning, the temperature was around 0F, then it kept dropping until we reached -7. As the day went on, we got back up to 0, but we're going down again now that the day is ending. It started out as a cloudy, snowy day, but in the afternoon we got beautiful blue skies. Lovely, but it means that it's going to get really cold tonight without the insulation from the clouds. It's supposed to be a lot warmer tomorrow (highs in the 20s), but really windy so I might end up skipping the morning walk again. Oh, well! Spring will come soon enough. At least it's perfect knitting weather!

I started the month by knitting an Edison shawl designed by Lynn Di Christina. I made the shawl for my sister, using some lovely, soft baby alpaca yarn that she gave me for Christmas. I figured that she would like the colors since she picked them out and she will appreciate the softness and warmth on her early morning dog walks! I knit this as quickly as possible so that I could get it into the mail and have it hopefully get to her before the colder weather hits. I just finished it on Friday and got it in the mail on Saturday, so hopefully she'll get it tomorrow. In my haste, I forgot to get a picture of the finished shawl, but here's a progress photo I took a while ago:

Edison Shawl

The final shawl has three colors: the beige and red above along with a blue. The next section after what is shown in the picture alternates skinny stripes of all three colors, then the shawl is finished with a section of solid blue. The shawl is long and skinny so she can wear it like a scarf. This should work well for her since she's not really a shawl person. The pattern actually has you knit everything but the final solid section in stockinette, while the final section is knit in garter stitch. One of the pictures on the pattern page shows the shawl knit in all garter stitch, although that's not mentioned in the pattern. It's a free pattern so I can't complain. I decided to also knit the shawl in all garter stitch because garter stitch is squishier and that's what I wanted for this project. I hope she likes it!!

The other project I've been working on a Glittering Snowscape Shawl designed by Stephen West:

Glittering Snowscape Shawl

This is the 2023 pattern for Stephen's annual after Christmas knit-along (KAL). The start of the project was in my last blog post. Now, I've finished the body of the shawl and am ready to start the border. The shawl is designed with strips of lace separated by strips of ridges. Here's a close-up of the final sections:

Glittering Snowscape Shawl - close-up

This is just with the shawl spread out. The lace will open up even more when the finished shawl is blocked. This is going to be a big shawl -- the last body row has 471 stitches in it! The fancy bottom border will take a little while to finish, but it's going to be gorgeous when done!

That's all for now. As I said above, I hope everyone stays warm!!

Nancy