Wednesday, February 27, 2013

FO: Echo Flower Shawl

This was one of the shawls that was made for a friend of mine. It's another one that got lost in the mail. The more I think about it, the more pissed I am with the terrible postal service we have in Canada. Postage is expensive and it's unreliable. I still don't understand why can't we get registered option for regular parcels. If we need to have it signed for we must shipped it via express. That's just stupid. 

This is one of the many projects where I'm knitting something I don't like- aka nupps. Nupps and bobbles are just something I hate making. I can't make them round enough. They just don't look even in my knitting. Some are always bigger than others. 

The yarn chosen here is a yellowish, orangish hand dyed yarn from Dream in Color. the colorway I used was butterpeeps. I bought this yarn a long time ago always wanting to find the perfect pattern for this lovely yarn. It's not the softest yarn in the market but it's just a lovely color that I wasn't willing to part with. My friend loves yellow so I chose to use this amazing yarn for her shawl. 

I would say the color in the first picture is the closest to the true color of the yarn. I made this during the winter so I couldn't take any pictures of it under natural sunlight. 

Apart from the border, the entire piece is constructed by knitting the same pattern stitch. It's the blossom stitch and the increases are made using the Estonian star stitch which I love a lot. I've made a few shawls using the same technique before namely the Laminaria shawl by Elizabeth Freeman. The main difference would be the Blossom stitch was used as the border in the Laminaria while it's used as the main stitch pattern in the Echo Flower Shawl.

I don't overblock the shawls. I don't like to over stretch the knitting. I'm not an expert in blocking as I still have problem blocking a perfectly straight base edge. I often knit full size shawls and given the knitted size I don't find the point in heavily blocking and stretching the piece when it's already big enough.

This is not super airy because of the yarn choice and needle size. Dream in Color Baby is labeled as lace weight but I find it to be a heavier lace weight or a lighter fingering weight. It's in between lace weight and fingering weight. I don't like to have super airy shawls so I often use smaller needle sizes than recommended. 


The nupps don't look so bad in the pictures but there are some that I had to use a tapestry needle and some yarn to sew them and make them rounder so they will look better in the shawl.

This is one of my all time favourite shawl pattern and I will make one for myself. I have a thing for Estonian stitches. If there are Estonian stitches in a pattern, the chances of me making it is a lot higher. 

Yarn: Dream in Color Baby in butterpeeps
Needle size: 3.5mm
Yardage: 560 yards ( 0.8 skein)
blocked size: 135 cm X 68 cm




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