The shawl I’ve been working on in Land O Lace Krissy is finished and blocked, although as usual I have no pictures to share until the pattern is released.  I can say, however, that I really love how it turned out.  You’ll see it soon enough, as the third instalment in the Folk Song KAL.  For the third and final folk song, we’ll be visiting Norway for another one of my absolute favourite songs – but more about that later.

I ended up using about 400 yds / 35 g of lace weight yarn, but the shawl can easily be made both larger and smaller.  The yarn is delightful – light and airy, and with a soft halo (which I just adore), and the colour really glows.  I used 3.5 mm needles, which worked well with the lace weight yarn.

The next shawl design has been started.  Today I’ve been casting on (and casting on, and casting on).  I ran into some bad luck when my cable separated from the join on my KnitPicks Harmony needles.  I lost 40-50 stitches – unrecoverably.  But I backtracked, jammed the cable in temporarily, finished casting on, and then switched to a different cable on my first row.

KnitPicks has been fabulous in the past about replacing faulty needles/cables, so I’m sure it won’t be a problem to replace this one as well.  I just have to remember to phone them tomorrow.

Anyhow, for this shawl, I’m using Classic Merino Lace from Knitting Notions in the colour Dark Rose.  Catherine was ever so kind to send me some a little while back for this design and I’ve been really looking forward to using it.  The colour is a muted antique rose – gorgeous, and quite different form the other colours I’ve been knitting with recently.

I’ve also made some progress on my next pair of fingerless mittens.  These ones are knit using ShaSha from Land O Lace.  The colour is called Grant, and is a very subtle gray/lilac/denim colour.  It looks really classy, and I wanted to design a pair of mittens as classy and understated as this wonderful yarn.  ShaSha is a light fingering weight yarn, and the gauge is significantly smaller than that for the previous fingerless mittens in the collection.  Relaxed and unstretched, I’m getting about 9.5 SPI, but it stretches easily to 7.5/8 SPI when worn.

The fine gauge looks so nice, and the cable pattern is really delicate.  I can’t wait to finish so that I can show some real pictures.  This is just a quickie shot while I was working on it.

As usual on Thursday, I had a chance to knit with the lovely ladies at the Manotick French Café while enjoying some tea and a bagel.  I was working on these mittens.  Additionally there was the lacy cardigan, for which the front is just about completed.  And the entrelac afghan which has changed colours since last week – the blue and yellow of last week have been replaced with more muted navy and pale yellow.  While it is discouraging to start over, I have to say that this new colour combination is even better than the previous one….. so I’m sure the final result will be better for it.