Swallowtail

I finished spinning up the merino handdyed yarn. I spun it as fine (thin) as I could. There was some neps in this roving, but I tried to remove as many as possible as I spun. It totaled about 350 yds when I 2-plied it. Three-ply would have made it too thick for what I intended it for…….the Swallowtail shawl.


It is so soft and bouncy. The lavender streaks in it are not as defined as I was hoping. If you look very close you might see them. The yarn has been staring at me longingly to do something with it. Everyday I would wake up admiring it, feeling its softness, hearing in my mind the yarn silently whispering “Knit me! Knit me!” I thought what would it hurt to study the Swallowtail pattern? Hmmm, seems simple enough. I went to Ravelry to study how the shawl came out for others. There were hundreds and hundreds of beautiful loveliness. It simply hypnotized me. I did notice, however, that most were using alpaca or a silk blend. I didn’t see too many with a pure wool. I was still determined to use my merino wool for this.

I came home one day wanting to escape the stress of the working world. My husband went to bed early and my son was off to college. I had the whole evening to myself and finally gave up resisting the temptation to cast on.

The cast on was a little different from what I was familiar with but I plugged on. This actually made a sturdier beginning for the shawl. This is a triangular shawl and I’ve made lace shawls before, but as I did the lace repeats, my counts were wrong and I had to rip back. The pattern only gave the total count of stitches after whole sections of rows, which was not helpful. In frustration, I finally sat down and using the Excel software program calculated how many stitches I should end up with after every other row. This also helped me keep track on the number row of the pattern I was knitting. At any moment, I could count my stitches and know which row of the pattern I was on and how many I should have ended up with. If it was off, I could find the mistake with 2 rows and correct it. This was so much better than ripping back 6-12 rows. If I can figure how to embed an Excel chart in this blog I will try.


Here is the start of my shawl……