My last post was a very sad one, and before I move on to happier subjects I’d just like to say thank you to everyone who took the time to read, like or comment on it. Meredith was a wonderful little cat and it was kind of you all to spare a thought for us.

Anyway, happy thoughts! I have a finished project to show off. It’s the shawl I’ve been knitting in Araucania Ruca, which is a deliciously soft yarn made from 100% sugar cane. It took two 100g skeins which works out at a total of about 482m for the whole shawl, and it always amazes me how much further yarn will go if you knit with it instead of crochet!

Because the yarn is slippery and floppy there was no need to block it and it drapes beautifully.

The pattern, LaLa’s Simple Shawl, is a free Ravelry download, and once you get going it is easy enough to memorise.

The pattern of eyelets reminded me of the veins of a leaf, and to make the shawl even more leaf-like I used the same picot cast off as the one I used on my Rosalie shawl.

Casting off over 300 stitches in a picot edging was a gargantuan task, but totally worth it!

The yarn was quite splitty, but worse than that there were a few very clumsy knots which meant extra ends to sew in once I’d cut them off. I was a bit nervous about the ends being visible because there is no natural fuzziness (halo?) to the yarn to blur the stitch definition. Everything is crisp and clear, including any mistakes! I think I got away with it though. You have to look extremely closely to see where the ends are sewn in.

Everyone who saw me knitting this shawl commented on the colours, but I have to admit that they wouldn’t have been my first choice! They were the last couple of skeins left and had been marked down to a bargain price on the last day of a wool fair, and they were so soft I couldn’t resist! I still have three skeins left, in three different colour ways, so I think they will have to be scarves.

Buy first, plan later – I’ll never learn!

Speaking of which, although the hellish crowds of the last time I went to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace are still indelibly burned into my brain, I’m going again this year! But NOT on the Saturday. Mum and I will be facing the perils of taking the train up to London tomorrow and hopefully it will be quieter than at the weekend when all the coach trips attend.

Sadly this also means I will miss Lucy from Attic24 who is apparently going to be there on the Stylecraft stand on Saturday and Sunday. 😦 And whilst I was just poking about to double check I’d got that right, I found out that Stylecraft have finally extended the range of colours available for their Special Aran and Special Chunky! I am thrilled that they’ve finally done this …BUT why did they wait until after I struggled all the way through nephling no 1’s Hulk blanket in King Cole? I could cry, really I could! Maybe if I turn up at their stand tomorrow and wail like a banshee they will give me free yarn to make me go away.

Worth a try. I’ll keep you posted.

Beth 🙂