As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been suffering with tendonitis in my left elbow. This makes my life difficult, as something as simple as picking up a pot lid can cause a sudden flare of pain in my arm and my family is quite used to hearing me whimper at times. No amount of rest seems to improve it, but that could be because I can’t really rest it when everyone is depending on me for food preparation, laundry washing and various and sundry mundane tasks that seem to be in my job description. When my husband tells me to ask him to get something for me, or open a jar, I can only respond that he isn’t quick enough, nor is he always there. So, the elbow gets better by increments instead of by leaps and bounds.
The second week of December, my husband and I took a holiday in Costa Rica. It was beautiful: bath-water-warm ocean, volcanic sand, palm trees, monkeys, colourful (and noisy) birds and an all-you-can-eat-and-drink-inclusive hotel experience. Very luxurious. I decided to give my arm a rest, bringing only some novelty knitting with me which I did for maybe a couple of hours, tops. While my elbow definitely improved, it didn’t get all the way better; and not knitting was more of a hardship than having a twinge of pain now and again.
On December 18 I cast on a new project, Serendipity Lace Shawl by Hayley Tsang Sather which I had seen in the “Blocking - Before and After” thread on Ravelry. I fell in love with this pattern and commented on the post that I needed to obtain it so I could make it. The designer suggested that I might like to join the Serendipity KAL for December-January. So I did.
The shawl is shaped like a circle with a bite out of it. It is beaded and has a picot bind-off which gives it a very fractal quality. Here is a photo of one by one of the test knitters:
I used Drops Fabel in cream and No. 6 copper-coloured beads from my local craft store. One of the design elements requires the use of increasingly-larger needles as you go. The garter tab neck edge calls for 3.5 mm needles, increasing to 3.75 mm for the first five charts (up to and including the more “solid” stretch with the beaded ladders), then switching to a size 4 mm for the next little bit, and size 4.5 mm for the final lace edging. I didn’t realize that I had to switch needle sizes at the beginning of the sixth chart, and there was no way I was going to rip back, so I just incorporated them two-thirds of the way through. I don’t think it really makes that much of a difference, since my tension is pretty relaxed to begin with.
Here are my progress pics:
The picot bind-off took me a whole afternoon, almost four hours.
Finally, on the blocking mats.
The finished shawl, absolutely beautiful.
The intended recipient is the wife of the tennis pro at the resort we return to in Puerto Plata every March. Against her dark skin, it will be even more beautiful.
Even though it looks complicated, it was not a difficult pattern. According to my Ravelry project page, it took me 12 days; but I had a couple of other projects on the needles and Christmas intervened (which seriously cut into my knitting time). Other FOs from the KAL are also incredibly beautiful. Some people used yarn with a long gradation, changing colour gradually from dark to light (or vice versa); there was lace versus fingering and all sorts of different materials, including an endless variety of beads. I will definitely make another one of these.
