Jennifer's Annis (ton)

The sewing machine has gone away and the knitting needles have been out to play.

The machine went away for servicing last week, so work on the jacket has temporarily halted. However, this gave me plenty of time to work on this mini shawl, my first lace project ever. Its not perfect and I think I need more practice blocking but overall, I am very pleased with this.

The pattern is Annis by Susannah IC and is from Knitty Spring/Summer 2010. I love the free Knitty projects and this one was quite easy for a beginner to lace (though perhaps not to knitting) to execute without too many grey hairs. I am proud to announce that although each of the eighteen lace rows took me an evening of work, and I had to use every stitch marker I own, plus making a few from yarn loops, so that I could mark the edges of every one of the 29 pattern repeats, I didn't have to frog a single row (and I didn't use a lifeline which for a first lace project was probably a bit dangerous). I did find that the yarn loop markers worked better than the little safety pin shaped markers as they were softer and easier to slip. Although the lace rows took ages to create, the main body of the shawl, which is only stocking stitch with short rows to give the shaping, took only a few evenings to achieve. Both the mistakes I've found are on this simple and easy section of the shawl of course.

The yarn is Hip Knits Organic Lace Weight. I had a 45g skein and have quite a bit left over, though possibly not enough to do anything useful with.. as is often the way of these things. Nevertheless, I have seen shawls made with contrast edges so I guess I can wait a bit and see if the yarn comes in useful for that purpose.

These pictures show the shawl unblocked laid on the carpet as soon as I'd cast off the last stitch.

And these show the shawl blocking on a cardboard cutting mat and then on the faithful Twiggy.

This is my mum's Christmas present. She has seen it and really liked it. I had to check with her first as the lace yarn is so very fine. She has a very boisterous dog with very sharp claws and the ability to do a vertical take off with no warning. Said dog has caused a couple of mishaps with knitted items, catching them with claws or teeth during a frenzy of leaping and capering about so mum tends to avoid items that are loosely knitted, just in case.