FO: Shetland Diamonds Shawl

I’m feeling quite productive these days! There’s been lots of ‘movement’ in the spinning department, but it’s most “nervous knitting”, as I had a job interview today (eep!). Here’s a bit of knitting that’s been “flying under the blogdar,” my Shetland Diamonds Shawl:

Not blocked, yet, but all corners grafted and threads woven-in, so that’s “done” in my books!

This shawl was not knit to a pattern, but rather to a shetland-shawl formula garnered from here and there. In essence, all you do is:
1) knit a square, flat (2 needles), using a provisional cast-on. Don’t cast off when your square is done.
2) switching to a circular needle, pick up the stitches from your needle, then an equal # down the one side, then your stiches from the provisional cast-on, then back up the final side; leave stitch markers at each corner. Then you knit a border, increasing every other round with a yarn-over on each side of the corner markers (inc. 2 sts. per corner = inc. 8 sts. total every other round), which keeps making it a square. Again, once you’ve increased the border to as large a square as you like, don’t bind off.
3) knit an edging on to the shawl, going all the way around from one corner back to the beginning. You just cast on the edging provisionally again, then knit one of the body shawl stitches together with one of the edging stitches, every other row, and when you get back to the beginnign you graft the ends together. That’s it — a shawl with no cast-on or bound-off edges, and barely any sewing!

The body/centre square in my shawl is one repeat of the “Faux Russian Stole” pattern in A Gathering of Lace, the border a diamond pattern I charted out myself, and the edging is some diamond pattern I found somewhere (maybe the book? or the internet?) Now I see why people (other people, more organized people than I!) keep knitting project journals & scrapbooks. This shawl was originally planned as a runner-up wedding shawl, but what with moveing in the same week as the wedding and all, it just didn’t happen in the summer, and when I picked it back up again, I ran out of yarn (right at the last corner)! Lucky for me Mel finally got some extra yarn to me, and I was able to quickly knit the final edge.

Details
Pattern: a mish-mash Shetland Shawl (see above)
Yarn: jagger Spun Zepher Laceweight, 50% merino/50% tussah silk, white
Needles: 3.75 straights, circulars, and one dpn
Project Timeline: June/July 2006 to April 30, 2007.

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