I am pleased to report that I completed my latest shawl on Friday.

Unblocked it measured about 48″ across the top and 22″ down the center back.

Blocked it grew to 60″ across the top and 30″ down the center back.

I used 2 skeins of Alchemy Juniper with very little left over:

This is 4 grams of yarn. Each 50 gram skein of Juniper has 232 yards, so this shawl took about 450 yards.

This is a very simple pattern — and I’m surprised how much I like it. Simplicity can be quite pleasing. I think I’ll call the pattern “Delightfully Simple Shawl.” As I mentioned, I plan to write it up in a lot of detail and include line by line written-out instructions as well as charts, so it will be a god choice for beginning lace knitters.

Future Stuff

I noticed on Friday that my upcoming book, Wendy Knits Lace, now has the cover photo displayed in its Amazon.com listing. I love the cover — hope you like it too. It will be released on August 23 — seems like a long time to wait.

In other future news, I’ve signed up for the Woolen Rabbit Yarn Club. Kim has some lovely yarns featured on her site and I’m looking forward to getting some lovely surprises in the mail!

Back here at home, Lucy is exhausted from helping me block!

First of all, the Antimacassar Shawl pattern is now available for sale in my Ravelry shop.

And speaking of patterns, my free Victorian Neck Cozy pattern has an addition — the charts have been written out line by line and that information has been added to the pattern, which is available here (pdf link). Many thanks to Andrea Shields (andrealmt on Ravelry) for her line by line translation.

On to the knitting at hand, here it is so far:

This is another shawl knit from the bottom up, and it is a simple all-over lace pattern. I cast it on last Thursday night so I’d have something mindless to work on over the weekend when I’d be in the company of other people for most of the time. Of course, I did very little knitting on stuff outside of the classes I was teaching, which is always the case when I’m doing a knitting event. But I did work on it a little.

I have it in mind to write the pattern up in quite a bit of detail, and include line by line written out instructions for the charted bits. This will make it a reasonably good choice as a first project for someone who is new to lace.

My shawl is being knit from my beloved Alchemy Juniper (same yarn I used to make the Japanese Garden Shawl) and I am using the Rain Forest colorway. Because the shawl consists of one lace motif worked over and over, the pattern stands up to a more variegated colorway.

I have my stitches on a 24″ Signature Needle Arts stiletto point needle.

I had these lovely needles in the 32″ length only, but for the past few shawls, I’ve been transferring my stitches to a 24″ Addi Lace needle at the halfway point. I find it easier to manipulate the fewer stitches on a shorter needle (duh). So at the end of last week I ordered a U.S. size 5 24-incher from Signature Needle Arts so I don’t have to switch from the Rolls Royce of needles down to the BMW of needles.

Meanwhile, Lucy is exhausted at the thought of my writing out this shawl pattern out line by line.

I had a lovely weekend in Chincoteague, teaching at Carodan Farm’s Soxperience2011, and I hope all the attendees did too. I did bring a camera with me and actually managed to snap a few photos. Very rare for me to remember to do that.

Here’s one of the attendees, hard at work in class.

And the other side of the room:

What a delightful group of knitters they were. I hope they had as much fun as I did.

We had a little downtime on Saturday afternoon, and I was happy to be able to see a few wild ponies grazing in the marshland.

You need to click on the photo to enlarge it to actually be able to see the ponies!

And here is a snowy egret:

And a shot of the ocean:

I returned home late Sunday and mustered the energy to block the Antimacassar Shawl, which I did finish Thursday night. Here it is unblocked:

Lucy included for scale. Unblocked it measures 50″ across the top edge and 25″ down the center back. And here it is blocked:

After blocking, it grew to 70″ across the top edge and 35″ down the center back.

Expect a pattern soon!

By the way, speaking of shawls, the total donations for the Japanese Garden Shawl are now over $5000! You still have time to purchase the pattern and make a donation — I’m donating all money from sales through the end of April.

Also through the end of April, remember that the rest of my patterns are on sale for 25% off (this excludes the Japanese Garden Shawl).

Lucy had a nice weekend with her Daddy, but was still very happy to see me when I got home on Sunday.

A study in kitty contentment!

As I write this, we are still up in the air about whether the federal government will shut down tomorrow night at midnight. We’ve been in a tizzy all week at work — so many things to think about should we be on furlough for a while.

Lucky me, I am on leave tomorrow and Monday so if indeed there is a shutdown, I will not have to deal with the odds and ends and fuss and bother that go along with wrapping up operations for it. for I will be in Chincoteague, at Carodan Farm’s SoXperience 2011. Well, that’s through Sunday and I’ll be coming home Sunday night, but I did schedule leave for Monday, as I always need a day to recover from a teaching gig.

A shutdown is very likely. But one scenario is that the government will shot down Friday night and remain closed all weekend while Congress scrambles to balance the budget, and will open again on Monday. Another scenario is that it will take longer and all us “non-essential” federal employees will be on furlough for a while until the budget is sorted out.

I’ll say it out loud here: if I get some unscheduled time off, I swear I will do some spring cleaning and work towards de-cluttering my home and getting rid of a lot of stuff I don’t use or need.

There. It’s out there. Now I have to do it.

In knitting news, I’m still working on my Antimacassar Shawl. I’ve done very little evening knitting this week (and my commuter knitting has been on something else — an unbloggable project) so it is not done yet. But it is close.

I’ll either finish it later tonight or, more likely, finish it this weekend during downtime at SoXperience.

I’ll likely not be blogging on Sunday because I’ll get home late.

See you next week!

Lucy sez:

“I must perfect my ballet moves for my weekend alone with my Daddy!”

I am apparently not “over” the concept of shawls knit from the bottom up because I am working on another one.

This baby is being knit from Indigo Moon Nature’s Harvest sock yarn in the “Cochineal” colorway.

I’ve already named it: Antimacassar Shawl, because it reminds me of an old-fashioned lace antimacassar.

Now, I have a memory of seats in European trains or touring coaches in the 1960s that actually had lace antimacassars on the seat backs, but I have googled my little fingers to the bone and cannot find any photos of same. All I can find are photos of plain fabric ones. Perhaps this memory is really a hallucination brought on by too many yarn fumes.Or Macassar Oil fumes?

Once again, I’m dating myself: first Tiger Beat, now this. (For the record, though, I’ve never actually seen inside an issue of Tiger Beat. The covers were frightening enough to me.)

By the by, I am now keeping a running total of donations to the Red Cross via purchase of my Japanese Garden Shawl in the box listing my works in progress above the posts here at wendyknits.net, so you can drop in at any time to see how we are doing. I’ll update it every day or so.

And in other news, Lucy is working on her interpretive dance moves.

Look at that perfect form!