Friday, October 10, 2008

Secret knitting

Not really, although this is a gift. Another shawl:

red garter shawl

The pattern is MacGyvered from a border pattern in Heirloom Knitting (repeated forwards and backwards, from the beginning of the chart to the end back to the beginning, for end-to-end symmetry) plus a knitted-on edging invented on the fly—it's like the plainest edgings from Galina Khmeleva's shawls, but with six-hole teeth, so each repeat consumes 10 body stitches (handy, since I cast on 101). Every wrong-side row is knit plain, which means it went very fast and was also very boring. However, garter stitch has a really satisfying sponginess and solidity to it—

red garter shawl - 2

It's a very squishable shawl, even though it barely weighs anything. The yarn is Ornaghi Filati Merino Oro in a red I've used before! and I knitted it on 2.5mm needles. Its finished dimensions are about a foot and a half by five.