A blocking bonanza

The first weekend of the New Year saw me undertaking a blocking bonanza for me as I had three shawls in need of some attention.

The first was a gift for the baby of a friend. The pattern is a 1940s baby shawl/blanket called bubbles, and has been knitted for generations of babies by my mother and grandmother. This was the first time I had ever made the shawl by myself, and I was a bit nervous. 

There were some hiccups with this project. I picked a lovely oatmeal Drops Lace to make the shawl, but when I started I found it was too light weight and that the stitch definition and pattern was lost. Humm....Eventually I decided I had to rip back and try with the yarn held double. The fabric it was producing was much better, BUT I wasn't going to have enough yarn. Grrr...

The solution? Well I had some green Drops Lace in my stash, so I decided to go two tone.

I'm really please with how this turned out. As the observant reader will notice I didn't knit as many rows of feather and fan as in the original pattern, due to the amount of yarn I had, but it is still pretty big and I really like how to two colours work together.

 

The second shawl to be blocked was the first of the two whippoorwill shawl, I ended up making two because the wool I ordered to make it didn't arrive before my holiday. 

The wool I used in this shawl is drops delight, with some place purple for the eyelet rows and lace edging. Although its not the rainbow shawl I had in mind, I do like the ways the stripes have worked out. However, I decided I didn't need two of these shawls so I gave this one to the friend whose baby is getting the bubbles shawl.

The final shawl to be blocked was my Whippoorwool, made with the beautiful rainbow yarn I order specially so I could make one just like Linda's on the Sewing Bee.

I am so glad that I decided to order this wool, it is just beautiful - the colours are so vivid and it works so well with this pattern.

I made the first of these shawls to the medium size, but on the second one I decided to go for broke and make the bigger size. While I'm glad that I did this, I realised part way thought that I wasn't going to have enough to complete the pattern.

My solution was to keep knitting rows of garter stitch after the first eyelet row, including the eyelets and the increase and decreases. I kept going until I had run out of wool, and ended up with about 20cm left.

Although not the same as the original pattern, I think this worked out really well, and the few rows of garter stitch keep the edge nice and flat. I love this shawl, its big, bright and cozy, and will be cheering up many a winter days.