The Shetland Garden Faroese Shawl

Editing to add the specs:

This is the Shetland Garden Faroese Shawl by Sivia Harding. You can get her designs from local yarn stores or directly from her site. It took me over a year to finish it, but that's really only about 7 weeks of true knitting time. Most of it goes really fast until you get to that final chart. Also, you'll think you're going to have all this leftover yarn and then chart G just gobbles it up.

The yarn is from Skaska designs (http://www.skaska.com/products.html). It's a hand-painted 45/55 cashmere/silk. This is what it looked like when it arrived from Galina.



The beads are from Michael's--Blue Moon beads size 6/0. I think I used two full tubes. The beads aren't in the design. I just decided where I wanted them and added them myself. I used the crochet hook method.

I like it, but if I had it to do over again, I'd drop down to size 3 needles to make the solid parts read more solid. Or maybe I'd use heavier yarn. I don't know. This was only the second piece of lace I've attempted and I started it well before finishing the first piece--so I didn't know to swatch and block lace. I thought gauge "wasn't important" for lace :) Well, I'm not sure it IS
important, but it is important to know how the yarn will behave and it it's going to look the way you want it to. So! Lesson learned.

I don't know . . . all that said, I'm pretty pleased with it. It's fabulously light. The beads add very little weight--but they do prevent me from trying to pass the shawl through my wedding ring :)

Here it is, completed, unblocked.




Blocking


Modeled by me


On the cherry tree


Close up of some of the beadwork


Emily, reenacting the scene from Sound of Music: "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" New title upon reading the comments: "Madonna Poodle"