So you want lace?

Thank you so much for all of the encouraging comments that have been pouring in over the past few weeks regarding motherhood as well as the Swallowtail shawl. As far as motherhood goes, I'm still working at it, (aren't we all?) but I'm getting to a good place once again.

If you read my blog via bloglines (or other aggregator), than you may not have noticed my updated links in the sidebars. I'm still missing some of the bloggers that I read, but I'm just waiting for them to show up in my Bloglines so that I'll have the link to add them. I'll still be doing some more tweaks to update things, but this is a start. I should probably save some time to knit and spin, right? =)

The other day, Tim asked to see more detail of the lace. Ask, and you will receive. Or, "Ask, and I will go overboard". Whichever.

The little "berries" in the Lilly Of The Valley border are the nups that I referred to in the Finished Object post for this project.


All of the little lace buds that make up the body of the shawl.


Lilly Of The Valley edging with peaked border. (Which, as you can see, is a little less pointy than perhaps it should be. Did I wear it on a damp day or something? Would that do anything to it?)


More of the budding lace pattern, just because even if you're tired of looking at this shawl by now, I'm not.

If that's still not enough detail, click each photo for bigger.

So. Several of you, my dear readers, have said that you've been considering this pattern or lace in general and just needed that one last extra "push". Let's consider this to be just that nudge. If you've followed a chart before, and if you are comfortable with setting up knitting rhythms in your head (you know, like when you're doing ribbing, and you chant silently to yourself "knit 2, purl 2" etc.), I'm pretty confidant that you can do this. The charts are clear, small and simple, and the repeats are short. It only costs around $5, because it takes less than one ball of Misti Alpaca Laceweight, and it is very satisfying to complete.

If you are very much a beginner, you might want to do this on bamboo circulars, since there will be more "grab" and your stitches won't go flying off all of the time. Although, the dagger-like KnitPicks Options are terribly nice to have for those nups. Well, and also the Alpaca might make things a little too sticky on wood. Scratch the former thought (although, if you've worked with this yarn on bamboo, please do leave a comment to let me know your thoughts!).

In other news, here is my Project Spectrum Knitted Babe for Feb/March, surrounded by the yarn that will become her wardrobe.

I've got a stranded sweater in mind, using all six of these colors, and then I intend to go stash diving into my fabric and see what kind of complementary colors I can come up with for various other accessories.

My favorite part of her is the flowers in her eyes.

I knit her in pieces just as the pattern instructs, even though I know that some people have knitted the Babes in the round. The reason I went with pieces is because I like the structure that the seams give her. Because this doll is styled after the rag-dolls of yore, I felt like it was important to maintain that flat-ish, seamed look.

I completely ignored the book's suggested doll faces and pattern pieces for features. In fact, I put the book aside for that part, and just cut felt and stitched everything free-hand, no pattern. It was very freeing for me, since I really like to do things by the directions. This doll was good practice on mattress seaming.

More to come as her wardrobe develops. (And hopefully a name, at some point.)

Something else that was good "finishing" practice:

If you listened to my podcast last week, you'll probably be able to guess what these are.

The Beauty Shot and more details on those tomorrow.