Third time lucky

I've been having a bear of a time with a particular purple shawl. The first time (reported here) I cast on, oh, two hundred too many stitches for a bottom-up triangle, and had to unravel it. The second time (undocumented) I had made too wide a rectangle, and it would've ended up too short to be useful. So I unravelled it too.

But now at long last I am on to something.



This is half of a thing; it has a little scalloped edge and then a polka-dots-in-a-diamond-grid pattern that becomes just polka dots toward the centre. Each dot has a nupp in its centre, so it is like dots nestled comfortably inside bigger dots, and I am altogether pretty pleased. I am coming to like lace knitting that's not particularly lacy.

I think that when I block it for real (rather than haphazardly on the couch just to see what it looks like, as pictured above), I'll do it gently; it's okay for the fabric to have some stretch and give and squish left in it. It's easier to get the straight edges straight when you're not blocking an item to within an inch of its life, too.

Juliet is some of the most well-behaved yarn I have ever had the pleasure of knitting. Looking at it, you'd have no idea that I had been knitting and unravelling and reknitting and unravelling; it looks just the same as the first time I knitted it up, with no undue fuzziness or pilling. The stockinette-based pattern is edged with only three stitches in garter on either edge, but in the few days of being shoved in my purse since I blocked it, the fabric has lain as obediently flat as it was immediately after unpinning.

It's a somewhat hefty fingering-weight yarn knitted at a moderately tight gauge, so the shawl will have a satisfying and comfortable weight to it. I think it would make the best sweater in the world, or the coziest, sturdiest socks.