Unst Stole: Inching Forward

The Unst Stole by Sharon Miller (Project #7 in Heirloom Knitting) is currently my longest-standing WIP, and after 2+ years I am eager to finish it up as soon as I possibly can. But, as Treebeard would say, Let's not be hasty... It's not really up to me anyway. This project insists on setting its own pace, because it is incredibly painstaking, and anytime I try to rush, or work on it under less-than-perfect lighting conditions, or when I am tired and/or not fully alert, I always live to regret it. So, frustrating though it may be, I have learned and must continually remind myself that slow-and-steady is the ONLY way to make any real progress. It will all be worth it in the end.

Fortunately, I have managed to devote quite a bit of time to the Unst lately, so there are some very encouraging results, although my hope (wish??) from this earlier blog post that it might actually be done by the end of summer will almost certainly prove to have been overly optimistic. By the end of the year is more like it, or maybe before the snow flies. We'll see. At any rate, the good news is that I can now report (with pictures!!) on all three sections of the pattern: center, borders, and edging.

I. Center
It took me three tries with two embarrassingly long hiatuses in between to get through the 476 rows of my modified center pattern, but on May 1st I finally reached that point. I did a total of 9 repeats, beginning and ending with a framing band of mirrored ferns and alternating in the middle between the original pattern and an adaptation of the Shetland Twins motif. Here's an old picture of the bottom frame and the first several repeats, plus a new one showing the entire center. Click on either thumbnail to get a closer look.

II. Borders
The Unst borders have always been my favorite part of Sharon Miller's design. There is something about the delicate lace trellis with its different diamond motifs, each of which is distinct and yet beautifully harmonized with the others, that I find utterly captivating. My one complaint is that the 136 rows of the original charts are over too quickly. That's not a lot of yardage, especially at the tiny gauge that I get with Gossamer CashSilk and 1.5 mm (US 000) needles. So for my stole I decided to double the length of both border panels, which should dramatically showcase the trellis/diamond pattern when the piece is worn.

Below are three photos to illustrate exactly what I did, since I did not simply repeat the charts as written. The top photo shows the frame separating the border from the center below it, and the beginning of the first border panel. In the lower left you can see how it looked when both charts were complete (June 6th). According to the original design, the body of the shawl would have stopped there. Note that there are 5 full diamonds in the trellis, each containing a different pattern (ABCDE), with half-diamonds above and below. I replaced the motif in rows 1-11 (i.e. the bottom half-diamond) with the more symmetrical/rounded one found on p. 218 of HK, and also wrote out a chart to complete the half-diamond at the top (F), which enabled me to continue the trellis with the original series of diamond motifs in reverse order: ABCDE-F-EDCBA, ending with the substituted 11 rows once again. The result is perfectly mirrored and balances nicely. I finished the 1st border panel on June 18th, and was amazed at how effortlessly my two-year-old provisional cast-on allowed itself to be unraveled so that I could start the 2nd identical panel, which I FINALLY finished on July 17th, bringing the stole to 70% completion, with only the edging left to round the whole thing off. As always, click on any of these pictures to get a closer view. I recommend this for the largest one in particular, which does not show up very well on a small scale.

III. Edging
Make no mistake: the edging may feel like an afterthought to the body of the stole, but it is a MAJOR undertaking all by itself, representing 30% (i.e. nearly 1/3!!) of the stitch-count for the project as a whole. The original Unst stole edging with its boxy squares in garter-stitch has always struck me as rather clunky, so I went hunting through Heirloom Knitting again and chose a more delicate pattern that seemed to strike just the right note. It is called the Queen’s Lace Edging (HK, p. 129) and fortunately has the same 20-row repeat as the original. It already includes a strip of faggotting along the inner edge, but I decided to incorporate the spider-hole insert from the original design as well.

A kind friend on Ravelry helped me do the math, which came out to a satisfyingly even total of 150 points: 20 across each of the short sides and 55 up/down the long sides, with sufficient ease before and after each corner to make the turns and still lie flat. The same Ravelry friend also advised me to go ahead and pick up stitches all the way around the stole on a long circular needle — 1420 of them, to be exact — to which the edging could then be attached. This took the better part of a day and was an ENORMOUS headache at the time (I won't pretend otherwise), but all that work up-front turned out to be a terrific investment. The Big Win was that it enabled me to double-check the spacing and stitch-counts and make minor adjustments in advance, rather than trying to do this on-the-fly and quite possibly having to rip out portions of the lace itself if something went awry. Now that I have all the stitches neatly held in reserve with markers at intervals to help me count, I no longer have to worry about whether the spacing will come out right and can therefore concentrate on the actual knitting, which poses enough of a challenge all by itself.

This third and final series of photos contains a close-up of the first 3 edging points, a wide shot of the entire stole, showing all the stitches bunched up on the circular needle with markers every 20 stitches along the edges and every 10 stitches near the corners, and finally my most recent picture showing the first *10* edging points (= halfway across the first short side).

The Queen's Lace is a 20-row repeat, as I mentioned, and the spider-hole insert is a 6-row repeat, so they line up together only occasionally (i.e. once after 1.5 repeats of the main pattern and again after 3 full ones). It's intricate and fiddly, with the added complication of working left-handed (chart dyslexia, anyone?). I think there's just a learning-curve and that it will speed up once I get the hang of how everything fits together. But I've been at it for several weeks now and still haven't turned the 1st corner, because I kept having to rip out bits. Two steps forward, one step back. Yesterday after yet another minor setback, I did manage to knit three or four points in a row without mishap, so maybe it will finally start to go more quickly from now on. That would certainly be nice, because at the rate I've been going so far, I estimate that it would take another 8 MONTHS or more to finish. Sigh. Clearly, no matter what, this edging is going to be with me for quite a while. Slow and steady, slow and steady, slow and steady...

Pushing the Lace Envelope

Anyone who knows my knitting reasonably well or has read much of this blog has probably heard of my love affair with the 2/56 NM Gossamer CashSilk from Heirloom Knitting in the UK, which I have used for three of Sharon Miller's designs so far (the Wedding Ring Shawl, the Princess Shawl, and the Unst Stole). Well, I recently acquired two new fine-gauge yarns from the same source: 2/32 NM Gossamer Silk and 2/90 NM Gossamer Cashmere.

The Gossamer Silk comes wound on cones of 100g (= 3500 yards). It used to be available only in white or ivory, but they have recently added royal blue, coral pink, and silver to their inventory. I had been promising myself for a while to order a single cone after the start of the new year, probably in white, so that I could experiment with some of Herbert Niebling's lace designs, which have been on my growing "To Do list" ever since the first book of patterns arrived here over the summer, courtesy of Lacis. One look at the shimmery silver silk was enough to convince me that the time had arrived to make the much-anticipated purchase. So here it is. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger .

I don't know how long it will be before I actually embark upon my first Niebling project, but it feels good to have the yarn on hand, because now I can act immediately whenever the inspiration hits. My oh-so-talented knitting pal Anita (a.k.a. The Fiber Artist) ordered a similar cone for herself at the same time too, so maybe we will eventually do our own little Niebling KAL. At any rate, click on the thumbnail (upper left) o get a closer look at this gorgeous fiber, which has all the delicious sheen one would expect from 100% silk. In some ways it looks even more like actual mithril than the platinum CashSilk that I am using for my Unst Stole, despite what I said at the time when I first launched that project.

The Gossamer Cashmere, meanwhile, is a brand new addition to the Heirloom Knitting line, available only in a creamy soft white color (see right). On the web-site Sharon Miller bills it as "almost certainly the finest natural yarn available for lace knitters today," and I knew right away when I saw the write-up that I simply HAD to experience this stuff in person. *WOW*!!! It is truly a remarkable thing to encounter a knitting yarn so unbelievably fine-gauged and yet obviously so strong as well, with all the dreamy softness and bloom of 100% cashmere. The mind truly boggles...

I ordered only a single skein to start, on the assumption that I will have to spend a good bit of time with practice swatches before committing myself to a full-scale project. Besides, the neat little 25g skein contains a staggering 1230 yards!! That should be plenty to be getting on with, as the saying goes. I honestly don't know what to expect about needle sizes, since I already use 1.5 mm (US size 000) needles (i.e. the smallest Addi Turbos available) to work with the CashSilk, which is 2/56 NM, almost *twice* as thick as this new material. Just take a good look at this picture with the dime and click for a closer view: you might not believe your eyes. Clearly there are some FUN TIMES ahead as my lace-knitting adventure continues...

Royalty is a tough act to follow, but...

I think I may have mentioned it once already, but I am *addicted* to the CashSilk yarn. I feel as if I'm chain-smoking with this stuff, even though I've never held a lighted cigarette in my entire life. Here's what I mean: as the Princess Shawl was nearing completion, I made sure to order my next installment of CashSilk so that it would arrive in plenty of time before I finished, and I cast on for the new project literally less than 24 hours after the washing & blocking extravaganza described in my previous postings. I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact at least for now that I simply MUST have one CashSilk project on the needles at any given moment. No more than one at a time, certainly, but at least one, always. That's just how it is.

But where to next? I mean, how on earth do you follow up on something as splashy and ornate and over-the-top as the Princess?

Well, for one thing, LESS IS MORE. I was ready for a project on a smaller scale, where I could enjoy the forgotten pleasure of knitting with less than 200 stitches across and actually see progress on an hourly basis rather than having to wait days or even weeks for my effort to produce a measurable difference. I also wanted something that I could actually expect to wear. Occasions that would call for a lavish garment like the Princess shawl are few and far between in my world!!

So for a bunch of different reasons I chose the Unst Stole from Sharon Miller's book Heirloom Knitting (p. 261). It's just the right size for my purposes right now as a "Princess knitter in recovery," and I've always loved the design, especially the scrumptious border (also seen on this shawl pattern, which is the first in Sharon's collection and a very close cousin of the Unst stole).

Oh! And I almost forgot to add that a new colorway in the CashSilk was released just in time for this project. It's called Platinum, and as a sterling silver jewelry fanatic, I adore this alternative to the pearly white yarn traditionally used for fine lace. The moon-glow gossamer thread is like knitting with a strand of mithril. Fabulous.

Along the way, while laying the groundwork for this project and reading through the book, I started exploring the possibility of designing my own lace shawl(s) someday, based on the traditional motifs. To that end, Heirloom Knitting is a wonderfully *RICH* resource, containing not only an extensive individual pattern library (centers, borders, edgings, and grids) but also various tools and guidelines to help ease beginners into the complexities of designing whole elaborate pieces. Sharon addresses such topics such as the selection and layout of patterns and techniques for the construction of various shapes (e.g. borders-inward vs. borders-outward), as well as aesthetic issues like balance, symmetry and proportions & how to do the necessary calculations too.

These design discussions are specifically aimed at the novice and so remain very much on an introductory level. Indeed sometimes their tone almost verges on the coy or flirtatious. For they seek to spark curiosity and inspire creativity, rather than to instruct in any detail. But since I have never designed my own lace before (having only ever followed patterns written by other people), they were pitched right at my level and I have found them very evocative. There are certain pages that I find myself turning to again and again, and each time that I do so, my understanding and appreciation grows deeper toward those who do design their own lace patterns.

Lately I have been particularly taken up with the concept of "frames," i.e. narrow patterned bands that serve to highlight and embellish the transition from center to border on a shawl. These intriguing design elements can appear singly or be layered several deep in a concentric fashion. There is a photo of an antique shawl on p. 216 of HK that I just can't seem to get out of my mind for some reason.

So I decided to try my hand at tinkering with the Unst Stole pattern a little, to see what it felt like to take some control over the design of a piece of lace.

I drew some confidence from the fact that this is a rectangular stole, with the two border panels placed (from the knitter's perspective) on the top and bottom of the center panel. All three of these elements are worked straight back and forth with the same number of stitches across throughout. No increases or decreases to keep track of or picky mitred corners to work out. That made it easier for me to take my first few tentative baby (or perhaps toddler steps) in the design direction.

There are some big decisions left that I will have to make at some point down the road, but here is what I know so far about my modified version of the Unst stole:

1. I decided to keep the original count of 185 stitches across for the center & borders, despite the small gauge of the CashSilk. One or two posters on the HK Yahoo Group suggested that their shawls, following the pattern as written, came out less long-and-skinny (i.e. with rather more width and less height) than they had hoped, so I did not feel any call to widen mine.

2. The layout of the stole precludes a 4-sided frame, but I thought it would be fun to experiment with a narrow band at top and bottom of the center panel, separating it from the two border panels. Using the mirrored version of the fern motif (p. 90), which is a cousin to certain visual elements found in the existing pattern, I decided to place a row with the ferns facing one way on the bottom of the center and another with the ferns facing the opposite direction on the top. I followed Sharon's instructions to do the math for the pattern repeats, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the ferns would fit exactly when spaced only 3 stitches apart. I simply placed 6 rows of plain knitting and a break pattern row both above and below the fern motif. Nifty!!

3. Looking at various pictures of the Unst stole as knitted by Sharon Miller and others, I have always thought that the spider-hole lozenges appearing in the center pattern between alternating bands of spider webs look too square and boxy, allowing the webs to dominate the pattern rather more than I would like. So in order to achieve more of a balance, I decided to elongate them by incorporating 3 spider holes into each lozenge instead of 2.

4. Just for the fun of it, by way of introducing some additional complexity and visual interest, and with encouragement from Sharon Miller herself (offered via the HK Yahoo Group), I also decided to alternate bands of the traditional pattern known as the "Shetland Twins" (HK p. 139). After some charting & based on the arithmetic, I decided to make the lozenges for the Shetland Twins pattern contain 4 pattern repeats to balance the height of 3 spider holes. In fact, as it turns out, the Shetland Twins lozenges come out two rows taller than the spider-hole ones. Better that than 3 rows shorter, so there you are.

5. As of right now I am still not sure how many repeats of my extended pattern will be required to achieve the desired effect. It will be a choice between 9 total bands of lozenges (i.e. 5 of spider holes and 4 of the Shetland Twins) or 11 (one more of each type, i.e. 6 and 5, respectively). Depending on the ratio of width to height when the center is complete, I will most likely add to the borders as well, rather than keeping them the same size and letting the center account for any increase in the overal dimensions of the finished piece (as it did in my Princess shawl). If/when this happens, I will simply continue the existing diamond-shaped trellis grid and repeat three out of the four "filler" patterns in the reverse order: those patterns now go ABCD, but I would do them ABCDCBA.

6. Last but not least, while I am at it with all these other modifications, I will definitely choose my own edging as well. I have never much cared for the original one, with its chunky squares of plain knitting.

Well, that's all for now. Here are two pictures of my Unst Stole center as a WIP. The first one shows the bottom "frame" and the second is a closeup of the modified center pattern. As usual, just click on either image to see a larger view.

Size Matters (a.k.a. Blocking the Princess, Part I)

I blocked my Princess shawl on a Sunday afternoon early in May, within hours of finishing the graft (see previous post). The process ended up striking me as uproariously funny, more or less by accident. I tend to find this particular species of unintentional comedy lurking EVERYWHERE around me. If you really want to hear God laugh, as the saying goes, tell him *your* plans...

Let me say first that it felt STRANGE to have reached this point, after nearly a year and a half of uninterrupted knitting, including *9 months* spent on the center triangle alone (which, being worked from the bottom point upwards, got wider and wider as it went, exaggerating the effect of slow-motion). It came as a bit of a shock to the system to find myself suddenly holding a great limp wad of cashmere/silk fabric that was no longer, in any real sense, a knitting project. No more dainty skein of yarn attached to it anywhere, no more "live stitches" to watch out for along any of its edges, no more complex pattern to follow, no more needles to hold in either hand. I almost didn't know what to do.

But I said almost. Of course the first step was to wash the thing gently. Even with the most careful handling and attentiveness, a LOT of dirt and grime can build up in a knitted fabric over time just from the oils naturally occuring in the skin. Check out this post from fellow lace enthusiast, with a photo of the bucket full of dirty water that came off a perfectly magnificent white shawl. Yuck!! Naturally enough, most of what came off my Princess was loose dye from the dark red yarn, but there was definitely some unpleasant brown ick in there along with the native burgundy. After letting it soak in the suds for a while, I rinsed it many times to take care of all the soap and any leaking pigment, and did not stop rinsing and re-rinsing until the new water stayed clean and clear. Then I drained the sink and pressed down on the shawl to squeeze out the excess moisture (being careful to avoid any lifting or twisting that might damage the fabric), rolled the damp, shapeless mass in a towel, and brought it to the bedroom. I intended to use the queen-sized mattress as a convenient platform for the blocking, because I like the way that the pins fasten into its firm yet pliable surface.

But when I unfolded the shawl began to stretch it out flat, I discovered — to my *astonishment* — that it was WAY too big to fit on the top of the mattress. Calling my husband in from the next room, I said: "Um, I think we have a problem here."

We both stared in consternation at the curiously unfamiliar object sprawled across the bed. It would seriously have sagged over the edges in at least two separate directions if I hadn't caught it and bunched it up in the middle again.

OK, time for Plan B.

Right, Plan B. Hmm...

What's Plan B??

I didn't have a Plan B.

It had never even *occurred* to me to formulate a Plan B.

Back to the drawing board, then.

So I took the shawl back into the bathroom and let it soak in cold water while I made alternate arrangements.

After casting about for suitable flat surfaces in size XXL, I decided that the living room floor would be my best available option. So I herded our six (yes, *6*) cats into the bedroom, cleared the living room and vacuumed the carpet, and then spread out a queen-sized comforter for padding, and started the blocking process all over again.

Even that wasn't quite good enough: in the end, I had to lay down a second comforter next to the first to accommodate one outer corner that needed some additional space.

Let me be clear: this piece of lace is *HUGE*. Mind-bogglingly so, as the late-lamented Douglas Adams would have said. And there is irony here of the deepest and juiciest sort, because I had added two extra border feathers to Sharon Miller's original pattern in order to prevent the finished piece from turning out too small. No, I'm not kidding.

Now, in my own defense, my previous Heirloom Knitting project, the Wedding Ring Shawl — done in the same tiny yarn with the same tiny needles — had turned out to be decidedly on the diminutive side, and I had not wanted the same thing to happen with the Princess.

Be careful what you wish for!!

Not that I was even remotely displeased with the results. Delighted, entranced, amazed, blown over — take your pick. But what made the whole experience that afternoon so overwhelming and surprising and comical is the extent to which I never saw it coming.

Even after watching the silly thing grow, indeed after holding it *in my lap* every day for almost a year and a half, I honestly had no idea just how big it really was.

No idea.

NO EARTHLY *IDEA*.

In its finished form, my Princess shawl measures 104 inches (8 ft. 8 inches) across at its widest point, and 68 inches (5 ft. 8 inches) from top to bottom.

I had a dickens of a time taking decent pictures of the entire thing, even with the wide-angle feature on our little digicam. But by bringing in a step-ladder from the garage and literally holding the camera ON THE CEILING of our living room, I managed to capture this aerial shot. Click on the image for a larger view, as usual. This one will be worth it.

I also got this photo, of which I am particularly fond, by standing in the doorway to the room and viewing the shawl edge-on. Again, click on the image for a full-scale view. What makes this such a "money shot" to my mind is the way that it seems to capture the full scope of the project.

I should add as a footnote (an academic can't resist) that once I got over the initial shock of watching my lace expand from a shapeless blob the size of small briefcase into a great wide expanse of gossamer fabric that took up most of the largest room in our house, I was not disappointed. And it's really not too big for me either: I am only a very average 5' 4" in height, but I can easily wear it without having it drag on the ground. :-)

Oh dear. I haven't talked about its shape yet, as promised in the previous post. Sigh. Ah well, that topic will just have to wait for my next installment.

Graft and Corruption (more on the Princess)

Dare I admit it? Grafting lace makes me really, really nervous. Racing pulse, sweaty palms, dry throat, the whole bit.

So before attempting anything on the Princess, I did some hunting around on the Internet in search of inspiration and advice. A quick Google search for the words "grafting" and "lace" revealed an interesting pattern that I found both telling and oddly humorous in approximately equal measure.

Many of the links that turned up were expressive of frustration and/or dismay, and some used *very* colorful language to describe the frayed emotional state to which the writer(s) had been reduced by their first (and second, and third, etc.) attempts to follow well-intentioned instructions designed by others, at least supposedly, to make this notoriously maddening process more congenial to those unaccustomed to it.

No less an authority than Sharon Miller herself has this much to say on the HK web-site: "I think grafting is one of the most difficult things to do in lace knitting and it seems that a lot of knitters share my feelings." And again this (here): "Lace Grafting - only for the brave!"

This is NOT an undertaking for the faint of heart, that much is clear. It reminds me of the ominous warnings often posted near roller coasters and other amusement park rides.

But I took courage from what I had gleaned from my web-surfing, as well as from a handful of suggestions offered by the generous souls on the HK Yahoo Group (where I posted a query), and so I gathered my tools and soon set to work.

Mind you, the seam in question is no more than 3" long. Just 29 little stitches. How hard can it be, right? Or, as my eldest brother is fond of saying, "What could possibly go wrong?" Famous last words...

In the end it took three separate tries and many painstaking and persnickety hours, but at last I came to the conclusion (perforce??) that I had achieved enough precision & accuracy to convince me that it will do. By the end, I honestly didn't know how many more times I could afford to rip the @$%&@#!! seam apart.

Though perhaps not the triumphant walk-in-the-park that I might have wished for, this experience did give me a chance to experiment with several different techniques, and that, I must admit, was highly instructional. Here is the low-down...

Attempt #1: I used the waste-wool method attributed to Lucy Neatby and illustrated both here and again here. The idea is to knit a few rows of garter stitch with contrasting yarn on both sides of the graft and then binding them both off before making the seam down below them. The advantage of this method is that if you know what you are doing and pay close attention, the contrasting threads (where the waste-wool meets the lace fabric) can serve as guidelines for your grafting. I found that part intriguing. The problem I soon encountered, however, was that the gauge of my gossamer yarn is so fine that the waste-wool got in the way and obscured the underlying pattern. So because I could NOT in fact see what I was doing, I failed to perform the necessary decreases on one side of the seam, and the whole thing ended up being off kilter and out of alignment. Grrr.

Back to the drawing board. But first, of course, I had to recover and/or reconstitute the two sets of loops after taking out the seam, which was a decidedly unpleasant process.

Attempt #2: This time I placed the stitches/loops onto a pair of dpn's, one on either side of the graft. That made it really easy both to see the stitches and to keep the seam *loose* (as a wise knitter who lives nearby had stressed in her reply to my query on the Yahoo list).

I think that the second attempt might have succeeded, too, except that I wanted to tighten it at least somewhat prior to blocking, and in that process I very nearly went out of my mind trying to distinguish the grafting thread from the lace fabric proper. Let me reiterate: these are tiny, indeed well-nigh microscopic stitches, and by necessity the strands of yarn (i.e. top loops, bottom loops, and grafting thread) are ALL the same color. So especially in clusters of stitches I found it very difficult to tell which was which — and in circumstances like that you definitely don't want to tug on the wrong loop!

Yet I would probably have been OK and gotten away with it, if the grafting thread hadn't first tangled itself up and then actually broken. At least it was only the grafting thread and not, as at one point I greatly feared, part of the fabric itself. I was very worried that it might have been one of the constituting threads from the provisional cast-on. THAT would have been a nightmare to reconstruct. *Phew*.

Even as it was, the whole thing had disintegrated into enough of a mess (does the phrase "Mongolian cluster frog" exist? It should.) that I decided with gritted teeth that I had better tear it out and start over. Again.

Recovering the loops a second time did not take as long as the first, but the process was far more unpleasant, owing to the fact that the well-worn yarn of these poor stitches had started to "bloom" (i.e. grow fuzzy), a prized characteristic of the CashSilk, to be sure, but one that is generally expected to emerge only after washing & dressing.

Attempt #3: Grim determination. By this time I knew that I had very little margin for error left. Three simply *had* to be the charm. Above all, I really needed to see what I was doing, so that I could judge the effect of each grafting loop before creating the next one (and thereby avoid big mistakes). The dpn's had not hidden the lace as much as the knitted waste-wool had done, but they were not exactly transparent either. So for this attempt, I placed the loops on single thin strands of contrasting waste-wool. Inevitably, without needles to hold them the loops themselves shrank to the diameter of the contrasting yarn, but at least I could keep better track of what I was doing.

Here is a closeup photo of the end result, taken during the blocking (click on the image for an expanded view). I kept the seam relatively loose, and did not either tie down the ends of the various threads or remove the strands of waste-wool. Thus it should be possible to make minor adjustments if necessary, or even (GOD FORBID) to tear it all out & start over, without fear of having to reconstitute the loops yet again.

It may not be quite perfect, but its defects are only minor and that is GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME. Time to make peace with it and move on.

The Princess Shawl

Like many of Sharon Miller's exquisite designs, the Princess Shawl was inspired by a museum piece: to wit, a wedding gift made for Alexandra, Princess of Wales, in 1863. On her website, Sharon dubs it "one of the most complex Shetland lace patterns ever offered." This project therefore enjoys a certain notoriety in the lace knitting world, and one can safely regard the process of completing it as a rite of passage. That is certainly how it felt for me.

I finished the first row on Pearl Harbor Day (December 7th), 2007, and the last row on May 9th, 2009 — almost exactly 17 months later. Through the seamless, organic design of the pattern, the penultimate step before washing and blocking the fabric was to graft together those same two rows, the first and the last, as invisibly as possible. There's poetry in that, yes?

By my calculations, the shawl contains 698,888 stitches, not counting any of the tinking and reworking that inevitably became necessary from time to time along the way. Those periods of retrenchment (for lack of a better word) would no doubt place the total number of knitted stitches at well over 700,000.

The yarn that I used was Gossamer CashSilk, with Addi Turbo circular needles in US size 000 (1.5 mm). This buttery soft and mind-bogglingly fine-spun fiber (70% cashmere, 30% silk) can be purchased direct from the designer's website in an ever expanding range of light and dark colors. I am HOOKED on it, and have turned to it for several of Sharon's designs. This time I chose the yummy rich shade of dark red called Burgundy. Photographs just don't do it justice.

Each demure little 25 g skein of the CashSilk contains 725 m. I used up 7 of these, and it was my brother who pointed out to me that we are talking about OVER THREE MILES of yarn in a single piece of lace fabric.

But enough statistics. This shawl was a grand adventure and no mistake. My various milestones, as well as the trials and tribulations, were amply documented by the messages and WIP photos posted by me to the Heirloom Knitting Yahoo Group. I go by "Miriam in S Indiana" on that forum, for readers who may be curious and find that they can spare the diligence and effort required to investigate further, but I would not even want to try to recreate the whole saga in detail.

Instead, I will give the Princess her due in this venue by recapping a few particularly choice excerpts from the final stages and the aftermath of completing this vast project. Perhaps they should each have a separate post.