Thursday, July 16, 2009

Indelicate

Now that I've finished the Daphne Stole, and given it to my mother, I can post the pictures of the blocking process.
Blocking is very counter-intuitive to me. After spending so many hours meticulously working on such precious pieces, the idea of soaking them in water and then stretching and pulling them just seems so....indelicate. I comprehend the necessity, I just don't ever wanna do it.

So, this is a crap picture, but this is what the FO is supposed to look like.






(Taken from the pattern, credit to French Girl.)


I chose to use a smaller needle size and a different kind of yarn, instead of Summer Tweed I used a cotton/silk blend. Because of these two choices, I ended up working about 80 rows instead of the prescribed 48, and I still thought it was narrow.




So here is the shawl, all blocked on my bed.















I know I could have been more precise with the pinning, but I was going for width, not a pretty edging.








I used all of the pins in my arsenal, and I know for a fact that I had at least a couple hundred in there.






I got through it, the shawl turned out sweet, especially after I added small oval gold beads at the ends of the fringe. Mom loved it, and I'm glad I put so much effort into it.