half.clad.onia

The Vital Statistics
Pattern: Cladonia by Kirstin Kapur of Through the Loops.
Yarn: Brooklyn Tweed Loft in colourways Truffle Hunt (grey/brown), Blanket Fort (purple) and Old World (dark blue); about 0.6 skeins of each.
Needles: 4.00mm
Start to finish: 5 December 2011 to 3 January 2012.
Stash/recycle content: Nope.

Comments: My first finished project of 2012! It's taken me a while to post about it because I feel that it is really only half done ... I'll explain. There are lots of comments about Kapur's other popular design, Andrea's Shawl, that it is too small. More on that topic when I finally block my completed Andrea's Shawl. I actually find this design to be too small. Admittedly, I used a half needle size smaller than called for ... perhaps it's actually the half-circle shape, which I so prefer to triangles but you don't get good tails to wrap around your neck and shoulders. Half-oval or crescent shapes may be better for me.

Anyway, this was a smooth knit until I got to the edging. The design calls for two colours to complete the shawl but I wanted to use three and there was a lot of to and forth (read knitting and frogging) while I worked out what to put where in the edging.Incidentally, if you do plan to work the eyelet border and lace in different colours, then it is important to work rows 5 and 6 of the set up border in the same colour as the lace.

And that loopy edging drove me loopy and blocking it was also a pain. I had to block the shawl in two shifts - almost all of my pins for the body of the shawl, and then almost all of them again for each of those picots.

Verdict: When I finish my Winnowing and know exactly how much of the Truffle Hunt I have left over, I am going to rip the edging on this (yes, ouch!) and knit more length into it, hopefully enough that the lace edging will be (at least) one repeat wider. I'll knit it in dark blue and grey/brown stripes until the Truffle Hunt runs out, then will switch to purple and dark blue stripes until I am ready to do the edging entirely in purple. When I frog the edging I will have to be careful to weigh the yarn to work out how much is required per section of lace repeat so that I, indeed, have enough to complete a wider edging.

So for the moment, this is half clad.