F is For Flower Basket

I am in love with knitting lace. I started this shawl on October 1st, brought it with me on vacation and finished it October 12th. It is the Evelyn Clark Flower Basket pattern using Knit Picks Gloss Fingering weight yarn in the colorway Dolphin.


About the yarn: Gloss is a merino and silk blend that has a nice, well, gloss to it. The pattern calls for 2 skeins of 400 yards of lace weight yarn, held double. This seems to make a shawlette and I wanted something a bit bigger. Each skein of Gloss is 220 yards and I used 3, knit separately. My intention was to knit until the yarn was gone. The yarn was smooth, so stitch definition showed up beautifully. It really is a lovely yarn at a very reasonable price. The color is a dusky blue which I am very partial to.
The pattern: This is a top-down triangular shawl. It increases two stitches on each end and two stitches on either side of the center stitch every other row. The wrong side is purled.
There is a chart for the first 10 rows and another that is repeated 7 times . I did 14 repeats and my finished shawl before blocking was 23 x 54 inches.



It is a sad, bumpy looking blob, isn't it?


I had 5 grams of yarn left over, certainly not enough to do another pattern repeat.



During blocking, size grew to 39 x 68 inches. It is always amazing what blocking does to lace.

After drying. It is exactly the right size to wear around my shoulders over a coat or dress.

I'm a member of the knitting lace a-z group on Ravelry, hence the name of the shawl. I think I have an I, the Icarus, a D for Diamonds and Pearls for the shawls, M for Montigo Bay scarf and B for Beaded Lace Scarf. I don't count the Clapotis since I really don't think that is lace knitting. I am going to see how many letters of the alphabet I can match with the lace I knit, but I'm not going in order, just making what appeals to me. There may be quite a few B projects, as I have Bitterroot and Brandywine waiting in my projects basket with their yarn.