The shawl is dead... long live the shawl

The Garden of Alla shawl, which I spent hours and hours and hours and hours on, is dead. Last night I discovered I had dropped a stitch waaaaayyy down the shawl. And it had run so far down the shawl that I was not, with my rudimentary lace knitting skills, able to capture and reinstate it. Whilst examining the disaster, I found I'd somehow managed to shift the spine stitches over, and on several rows there was no spine at all. I also seemed to be incapable of keeping the stitch count straight on this pattern and persistently came up one stitch short on my first repeat on one particular row.

So, last night, very reluctantly, I pulled out my hours and hours of work. Which only took twenty minutes of course, since destruction is always much faster than creation. I might add, when I pulled it out, there was rather more of the shawl than shown above. The photo is not a recent one.

I wasn't entirely sure that the lace pattern lent itself to the yarn colours, plus it seems I had been using the incorrect size needles, leading to a rather more open texture than would seem sensible when one shares a house with a very friendly animal with a tendency to scratch a person on the arm or shoulder to gain their attention. So I've cast a different pattern on this time. The new shawl is called Seas Shawl by Suzy Crancer, who also designed the Garden of Alla shawl. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/seas-shawl Since the yarn is sort of fruity coloured, I've named the new shawl Fruit of the Sea Shawl. The pattern appears to be a bit easier to follow than the Garden of Alla and appears to be a better partnership with the yarn so we shall see how it turns out. I've only knit about thirty rows so far, so its too small to see if the pattern will truly work with the yarn.

Coming soon. Trousers. But they are black and I know better than to photograph black trousers indoors in the evening. I am currently waiting for the rain to clear up so I can get out to take a photo of them in natural light.