Done, Done, Done!

Not that I'm excited or anything, but my shawl is DONE! I love the colors, I love the drape, I love the yarn, I love the shawl! And I love my new favorite toy - I've always used the carpet for blocking but I'd been coveting a blocking board. The 'real' boards run about 80 bucks - more than I'm willing to spend. Last week I came across the idea of using a cardboard quilting board; the blogger said she'd used one for years, and the cardboard withstood wet blocking very well. So I handed over my $7 (!!) to Joann's (they're on sale for 50% off) and brought it home to go with my $8 fluxless welding rods from Harbor Freight ('real' blocking wires go for about $25 and these work exactly the same) and my rust-proof T-pins from the local office supply store (cheaper than quilting pins. Do you see a theme here? Why spend potential yarn $$ on name-brand supplies when something that costs less works just as well? /end rant.)

The shawl is enormous, with over 1000 yards of Merino goodness. For reference, that's a yardstick at the top of the picture. I should have measured while it was pinned flat, but it looks to be 7-8 feet across and maybe 5 feet long. I had it about half blocked when I spotted the boo-boo. Do you see it? No? How about now? Or now? I thought about ripping it back for, oh, about 30 milliseconds. It's done. Nobody will see the mistake but me (I hope). Sigh. I really hate when FO's aren't perfect.

The yarn is superwash Merino sock yarn from my favorite supplier of yarn p0rn , Fearless Fibers. The colorway is 'Venerable', a blend of royal purple and shades of charcoal gray, rainbow dyed to give a mosaic rather than striped or patterned effect. Lovely, lovely stuff.

The pattern is based on this. It was nice and easy to work up; a six-row repeat where four of the six rows are the same. I substituted wool sock yarn for the cotton, made it a lot bigger, and eliminated the scalloped border at the top, using single crochets instead. Can you tell I love it?