throwing shapes

So, you know when one thing goes wonky, lots of them do? This is a tedious topic, so I won’t say much about it, but suffice it to say that, among a bizarre range of techno irritants, I’m still stuck with the ancient laptop. I’ve insisted that the poor machine gets with the 21st century and uses firefox and photoshop but doing this is rather like pulling teeth.  At least I can blog again. After a fashion. Hey ho.

I’m writing A Big Thing at the moment, and its rather messin’ with me mind. In the evenings there is no head space for anything but the most mindless craft activities. I’ve been enjoying my lace projects recently, but needed something not too taxing — this Shetland Triangle was ideal. It took me a week to make and was both mesmeric and relaxing.

I used my little camera for these pics as the SLR is in use elsewhere (techno irritant no.43). The results are, um, Ok, but try as I might, I couldn’t get a decent wingspan shot of the shawl. I threw some interesting shapes though:

stern . . .

functional . . .

minatory . . .

furtive . . .

um, coy . . .

Ladies and gentlemen, I present a plug socket!

thats quite enough of that. Here’s one last shot, though, of the lace.

Most of the other versions of this shawl I’ve seen leave off the pointy edging. But I quite like the points, and knit the pattern exactly as written right to the last row. I used Artesano Alpaca 4 ply, and used almost all of 2 50g balls (touch and go whether I could complete the edging, but just managed it!). This is quite heavy for a lace weight yarn, but makes just the sort of shawl I like (a warm one), and it is lovely to knit with. Because my cast-offs are always too tight, and because keeping the flow and pointiness of the edging was crucial, I used an enormous 12mm needle to cast off with. This worked well! The points are indeed pointy.

Pattern: Evelyn Clark, Shetland Triangle (fir cone lace).

Yarn: Artesano Alpaca 4 ply, red.

Needles: 5mm addis. 12 mm for cast off.

Ravelled here.