Garnet

I am so excited to share this finished project with you. Making this shawl was one of those times when the pattern, the yarn, and the process all work so well together, and each turns out to be even better than I was expecting.

The pattern is Robin Ulrich's Amethiste shawl. It's available for purchase on Ravelry and I urge you, if you like to make shawls with geometric, lacy elements, you should make this one! This is a very well-written pattern, with lots of helpful notes and no errors that I could find. I think it would be a good pattern to check out if you're a beginner, because it's easy to follow with very nice results. The difficulty I have with lace is not being able to "see" my work as I'm knitting, but with this pattern, the lace design came out very clearly and it was easy to tell if I was about to make a mistake.

And the yarn... yum. This is the madelinetosh tosh sock that I bought back in October. I went into the store thinking I'd probably get one of the cream or light blue colorways, and I walked out with Tart. As you can probably tell by my projects (and my blog's layout), I like purples, greens, and blues, and tend to ignore everything else. But I love this color of red and it was such a refreshing treat to see it in my hands as I worked on this shawl.

Maybe because I was so happy with the pattern and the yarn, my knitting went really smoothly. That's not to say I didn't make a couple of mistakes, but in a landmark event, I was able to diagnose the problem, drop down, and fix it, despite working in lace! I was so thrilled the first time I had to do this that I didn't even mind when I had to make the same correction a few rows later. Plus, I've been trying to control my tension, and I think it shows here. It's very drapey and the lace opened up just like I wanted with blocking - and stayed open, unlike some of my tighter lace attempts.

I bought enough yarn to make the full-size shawl, but opted instead for the shawlette, because I think that size is more versatile and suits me a little better. I can't wait to wear it!

(Apologies for the not-super-inspiring pictures. It's a little too big to photograph easily by myself, and it's a little too cold to go outside and do a photo shoot.)