My challenge for this month's #craftblogclub: finish the Margrét shawl (pattern: Icelandic Handknits by Héléne Magnússon). It was a DIY souvenir from my trip to Iceland. I only started it at the end of May, but I knew that if I didn't work steadily at it, I'd give up and let it sit.
In the middle of May nothing was started yet:
Last night I did the last few rows and cast off. This morning I washed and blocked the shawl, pinning it to my mattress for lack of anywhere else open enough to stretch it out — the length of one of the cast-off edges was the same as the width of my (queen-sized) mattress. It was dry just after lunch, and since it was a nice day, I took it out to the nearby lakefront park for some photographs (ta da!):
Just as well, because Toronto is in the midst of the summer's first heat wave. I had to be careful not to handle the shawl too much while I was taking pictures.
It was difficult to find a place where I could spread it out safely (don't say the grass, because we *cough* have a lot of dogs in this neighbourhood). The final blocked measurement of the "spine" was 121cm. That comes down almost to my knees, which is fine by me. I'm tall(ish), so I like it when I can make something long and generous to wrap up in.
I'm very pleased with this crocheted loop edging. It went reasonably quickly — it took two episodes of The Killing on Netflix to finish — considering how many stitches needed to be cast off. How many I don't know, because at some point there were so many that I decided not to waste my time counting. If the two halves on either side of the spine were symmetrical, I was happy!
I wound up having quite a lot of yarn left over. Originally I'd planned on just knitting until all of the green was used up, but it became very obvious that the piece was big enough and it was time to stop. I have about 300m of the second-lightest grey. That should be enough for a lacy scarf. I'll have to figure out what to do with the rest. I'm hoping to do something in the way of lightweight gloves, but all the lace-yarn glove patterns I have call for a lot of yardage to complete. There must be a way.