Kiri Complete

I've finished my very first shawl. Go me. I had a bit of misunderstanding with the cast off directions, & thus ended up frogging & redoing the first three points of the Kiri when casting off. But in the process, I realized that what I had accidently done on the whole thing for my first three-points-worth attempt at casting off would actually help the points stay pointy when casting off, so the frogging adventure was worth it. I had mis-interpretted the directions & added an extra stitch in every stitch I cast off for the first several inches the first go around. That was making the whole edge too ruffly, so I had to frog that cast off bit. However, putting an extra stitch into each cast off right on the end of each point helped define the points better, so I'm happy with how it turned out in the end.

The stole is still unfringed because I've been concentrating on finishing my Kiri shawl. It is blocking as I type this. Hopefully it will be done drying before my daughter gets home, since it's pinned out on her bed.

Red Hot July

I survived the summer storms here by knitting through them. I started working on a Kiri shawl last weekend, & I'm really enjoying it so far. I got the yarn on sale at a St. Louis LYS that is going out of business. Red seemed an appropriate color to work on in July, what with Independence Day, & red hot heat, & all...

I got the pattern free on the web at alltangledup.com
The Shawl pattern is downloadable/printable in PDF format It's my first attempt at "real" lacework. I had never tried anything other than poncho patterns that included yarn overs in the overall fabric -- those have written instructions only & no charts needed for them. So when I tried to just look at the Kiri charted instructions, I was a bit confused until I just started to make it & everything became clear right before my eyes.

I'm very pleased with how well the Kiri pattern is written. It's much easier than it looks. The author also includes both written & charted instructions, so it was easy to follow the written instructions first, then be able to look at the chart once the pattern started to form, & be better able to understand the charted version of the instructions.

The first picture shows the first few starting rows of the shawl. The second shows how far one ball of yarn covered, & the third is with the second ball of yarn nearly finished.

To fringe or not to fringe, that is the question.

This post is in regards to the item I was working on in my previous post -- the "camping stole." Because I only got a single skein of pretty multi-colored mohair on sale, & there wasn't any more of that color available, I decided to make something that I could just keep knitting the same pattern until the skein ran out.

I ended up getting a coordinating solid color to do a solid stripe at each end to make it a bit longer, & I could add solid fringe of the same color at each end as well. But I can't decide if I want to do that or not.

Here are some pictures. & I'm posting the question to the knitting community at large. Fringe it? Don't bother with fringe? If I do add fringe, how long should it be? I haven't added fringe to anything in years & years.

Camping

I'm a few posts behind on my blog, so I need to finish June before I can start on July.

I have fast become addicted to knitting. I can tell. Want to know how I can tell? I took a new knitting project when I went camping with my son, just because I couldn't imagine going without knitting for 48 hours. I got a single ball of mohair on sale at Threadquarters, & made a stole with it. I got it half finished on that camping trip.

The pictures are courtesy of my 8 year old son. We had just returned from a hike & had a break in the schedule before dinner.