I found my soldier girl, she's so far away. She makes my head spin around

capelet, originally uploaded by Olma.

You might remember me rabbitting on some time ago about a project I'd been wanting to knit for a long time, and a painful process of knitting and then unknitting to remove mistakes, and wondering if I was really ready for this project. This is what it was, a lacy shawl for my sister. Of course it's not exactly what I had originally envisioned. My envisioning abilities being what they are (kind of fuzzy), it's possible that it's nothing (or then again, everything) like what I had envisioned. I mean, it's the right colour and it's lacy and soft and light. I think it was going to be longer.

I'm not sure if it was supposed to be more complicated. It's quite simple, a big rectangle in star stitch, with smaller blocks of garter stitch to add interest (and make the wool go further). The wool is anny blatt 'fine kid'.

The weather was pretty hot when I gave it to her, and first she displayed it in the living room for a few days.

on boxes
Originally uploaded by Olma.

Finally we had a cooler day and she seemed pretty keen to wear it. I was pleasantly surprised to see how it seemed to fit sort of like a capelet. That's her own lovely brooch. We went out for a while, even had an extensive photo shoot back home, before realising she actually had it on inside out. But really, it looked just fine that way. In the rest of the photos here it's around the 'right' way.


even ok insideout
Originally uploaded by Olma.

close arm, originally uploaded by Olma.

rear
Originally uploaded by Olma.

Knitters seem to be always going on about the magic of blocking. Especially for lace projects. Although this stitch is not quite as open as a typical lace pattern, it still needed to be stretched out into the proper shape, looking pretty scrungy when it came off the needles.
pre-block
Originally uploaded by Olma.

pre-block_2
Originally uploaded by Olma.

I hand washed it gently and then spent ages trying to pin it out evenly, which didn't work too well, because the pins give it a scalloped edge unless you use about, oh, a thousand per side. Then I conceived a plan using tiger tail (jewellery wire) threaded through each edge to keep it straight. By the time I had this system worked out, the shawl had almost dried, so I had to wet it and start again.

Of course, I wouldn't want anyone to mistake this for a machine knit product, but it's okay because I included a 'design irregularity'. It wasn't until the second time blocking session that I noticed a cute (and quite obvious) little region where the star stitch pattern strayed into the garter stitch area. Somehow I decided I could live with it.