Lacy Shawl for Me

I've been knitting on and off for several years now, and I've been thinking recently how I've never made anything for myself. It just never seemed right. But now everyone has these cozy items I've made for them while I'm still shivering over here. So I decided that it is finally time for me to make something for me.

I got this burgundy yarn last year, Bernat burgundy, and I've been wanting to make something for myself with it while feeling too guilty to actually start. I finally decided that I am going to make myself something, and I decided that it's going to be a shawl.

After searching around for about an hour I came across something that looks like what I want: easy enough that I can handle it while still looking cute and lacy. You can access the pattern for free here.

This is an image of the shawl from coatsandclark.com.

I had a little decision to make when I started this shawl. The pattern calls for US 9 (5.5mm) needles, and while I know that gauge isn't going to be especially important in this, I didn't want to stray too far from that because the size the pattern claims the shawl will be is about the size I want it to be. Now, I knew I didn't have any US 9 straight needles, but I knew I had a US 9 circular needle. However, the pattern is only 78 stitches which is not exactly call for circular needles. It wouldn't hurt, and at least I would be able to get another set of my circular needles out and loosened up. I also have a set of US 10 1/2 (6.5mm) straight needles. If they were US 10s, I would have started with them right away without another thought, but my straight 10s are still attached to my sister's lace scarf and they're short needles, so I'm not sure they'd be the best choice anyway. I was hemming and hawing over what needles I wanted when I realized I had US 10 circular needles. I started with those right away.

Slightly blurred close up of the pattern with close to true color.

Larger view of the pattern, but with weird washed out color.

I quickly used a knitted cast on to cast on my 78 stitches and then knitted one repetition of the pattern on the first day. I admit I let it sit around for a few days, but yesterday I finally felt productive enough to work on my shawl. I knitted through the pattern twice more so now you can actually see the pattern in it, and I'm to my favorite part in every project when the project starts to look like whatever it is and not just a unclear lump. The shawl is 19-20 inches wide and about 7 inches long. The pattern says it should be 17 inches wide, but that's just the difference between the 9s and 10s. The pattern also says it should be 58 inches long, and mine may well reach that length, but as soon as I'm running low on yarn and don't think I'm going to be able to go through the pattern once more and knit the last few border rows, I'm going to bring it to a close. Then again, if it ended in the middle of the pattern, it wouldn't be super noticeable. I mean, I would know, and other knitters would probably notice, but it would still work just fine as a shawl, and that's all I really want.

This is the project I have going right now that I'm by far the most excited about. The pattern is turning out really well, and I'm not pulling my hair out trying to knit it. The yarn looks gorgeous, a bit better in real life, I must admit, because my webcam does this weird thing if I wait too long to take the picture. My only worry now is that I'll run out of yarn and have to get another skein. At least I found the paper that tells me the brand and color, so I'll be able to find the same color if it gets to that.

Happy knitting!