Royal Wedding Shawl preview

The progress on my Fyberspates Royal Wedding Shawl is good. I'm past the middle now. So I thought it was time for a preview:

Not impressed? no, unblocked lace is not very pretty is it! I showed it to a friend last night who's seen my finished blocked shawls hanging on my dress form and she didn't look impressed either.

So I pinned it out. This is not proper blocking. it'll be stretched more for the final blocking. I just wanted to open up the stitch pattern a bit so it can be seen properly and get some idea of size etc.

That's better isn't it?

I love this pretty pattern which will be at the ends:

And as it's a wedding shawl, it has a hearts section in the centre - sorry the pic is a bit blurry.

it also features rosebuds and horseshoes (a sign of good luck at a wedding).

You can find the gorgeous Fyberspates Royal Wedding yarn to pre-order here. If you'd like a Royal Wedding souvenir, this is the one I'd go for. A million times better than some of the tacky stuff out there.

This afternoon I started the edging. I've still got quite a bit to finish on the centre panel but I swatched for the edging using the proper yarn the other day and did 4 repeats. It wasn't enough to determine how much yarn I'd need for the entire edging but rather than knit a larger swatch I thought I might just as well start adding the edging so I'm working the edging around one short side. That way I can work out more accurately how much yarn I need for the edging and make sure i'm happy with the way the edging fits around the corners.

I do love the edging, it's one I've wanted to use for a long time. It look complicated but is actually quite easy. And it uses elongated stitches which I love. I'm not sure whether to show a preview of it or not. Maybe in a few days. watch this space.

All the charts are typed up, which was a big job. I even did one giant chart which actually shows every single stitch in the entire centre panel. I showed it to the ladies at knitting group this morning and they were in awe. it's not a chart you can knit from, its far too small for that. the purpose of it was just to see how the different elements fitted together.

I got halfway through dyeing the Lace Variety Club yarn yesterday and then  ran out of dye. Silly me didn't double check I had enough before I started. I've been and got more so I'd better go and finish the dyeing. Parcels will be sent out on Monday.

Tomorrow I'm off to Launceston to teach at the Cornwall Yarn Shop. We're doing Easy Lace knitting. It'll be a fun day and the shop is gorgeous.

I will try my best to get a Pattern Of The Week posted this weekend. A few things this week have not gone to plan. I'm way, way behind on pattern writing, panicking about a yarn for a new design which hasn't arrived and has to arrive in the US by early April, and I need to knit it up too - it's a quick project though. And i'm suffering from a really severe headache today. A few minutes lying on the floor before yarn dyeing might ease it.