swallowtail

The Swallowtail Shawl was my first foray into lace knitting, and I have to say that the pattern was a great one to start with: the results are pretty, the knitting is interesting without being perplexing and gives relatively instant gratification.

There was really only one snafu along the way (well, expect for the time I knit while drinking wine and — predictably — had to tink back a couple of rows): I ran out of yarn. Hand-dyed yarn that was not, at the moment I needed it, available. So after some contemplation of the stash, I pulled out my skein of Cherry Tree Hill supersock in pink. If I was going to add a contrasting yarn, I was going to go big. All in all, the unexpected modification turned out well, I think — and is definitely cheerful, which is important in a wedding-gift shawl, I’d say. Next time I’ll try US7 needles to possibly avoid this problem.

Specs:

pattern: Swallowtail Shawl by Evelyn A. Clark

yarn: Tausenschön hand-dyed sock yarn in Zitronengelb (420m/100g) + Cherry Tree Hill supersock in Pink (51m/17g)

needles: US8/5mm circs

started: June 25, 2008

finished: June 30, 2008