Preview

A while back Judie shared a blog entry about a "Shawl in a Ball" hand knit project that a machine knitter adapted and blogged about.  The project really caught my eye, and I thought I would share information about it now to give anyone who might be interested an opportunity to read about it, and if interested get a bit of a head start.  It is a lighthearted, creative and simple shawl where gauge doesn't really matter (except in terms of drape) and you're finished when you run out of yarn!

So first, have a read through the blog entry here.

The yarn is from Lion Brand, I bought mine locally at Michael's (around $12-ish per ball I think?).  The colourways are beautiful - you can see them here.  It's 58% cotton, 39% acrylic, and 3% "other" and the gauge on the ball band suggests 17 stitches/25 rows per 4" with 5.0 mm needles.  Because the pattern is more a guideline than a pattern ("I also did lace rows whenever I felt like it"), you could pretty much use any yarn that you like.  Gauge doesn't really matter in terms of achieving specific measurements, what is of more importance is the "drape" or "hand" or the fabric, which for shawls is generally, well, "drapey".

So that's my next project plan, and I'd be happy if anyone wants to follow along or knit along, or just read along.  To prepare I plan to make a swatch, check out some hand manipulated lace patterns in the books I have or online, add those to my swatch to experiment, and then just go for it.   So just one playful swatch and then right on to it.

Because my machine is a midgauge, and I'm primarily a hand knitter, so my stash is almost exclusively hand knitting yarns, I made myself a chart to help figure out the machine gauge that I should start with based on the hand knitting recommendations.  My chart tells me that the tension dial for a yarn gauge of 17 sts per 4" should be around 8 or 9, but I note that the blogger on Knitting Paradise (does anyone know her name?) was able to do the shawl on a standard gauge at tension 10, which she reported to be not quite as loose as she wanted, but she was able to block it out.  So I may find 8 or 9 too loose.  We'll see when I do the swatch.

I would love to upload the PDF of my chart, or cheat sheet, but it appears that I will have to learn how to use Google Docs first, so that's not going to happen tonight, no matter how easy it might be.

So let's have some fun!  I won't actually get to this for a few weeks I don't think, so feel free to work ahead of me!  In the meantime, in keeping with the Monty Python/John Cleese theme, I leave you with these words of wisdom.

Nancy