Saturday, July 18, 2009

No Capes

As soon as I finished this shawl, I heard Edna Mode's voice in my head exclaiming, "No capes!"

This is the first true lace project I've knit, and honestly I'm just not a lace-shawl-wearing kinda gal. But I needed something interesting to knit. So, I chose this project.

Late last year, Shirley Paden had hired me to knit up a sample of the lace shawl that appeared in Vogue Knitting's Spring 2009 issue. I swore, to no one in particular, that that would be the last time I ever knit lace or used that crazy-a** mohair string they call yarn.

I started off using Yarn Place's Graceful yarn, which is very thin, yes, but not very fuzzy which is what I convinced myself was the issue with that mohair. After about 5 starts getting through maybe the first repeat, I changed my strategy. I dug into my Habu jar, and found that I had bought some of their Wool/Linen yarn on sale a few years back. I took a quick visual inventory of the jar and saw that I had five balls.

Well, I only had four. After a lot of cursing and more swearing of the different kind, I decided to throw some of that mohair in at the end for a different effect.

My naughty naughty Pug attacked my ball of mohair, which we know is unsalvageable once dog drool and lots of clawing happens upon it. Insert more cursing and more swearing, and thankfully I had another ball of mohair and finally finished this !@#$% lace project.

I held it up, and instantly thought: Great. I knit myself a frilly cape. Edna would be angry.



I figure I'll wear it more like this... does that make it seem less grandma superhero?

2 comments:

Fer said...

Yep that works. It would look even better with a big groovy brooch to hold it in place.

Anonymous said...

I will un-lurk to express something: I really feel there needs to be a resurgence of the frilly shawls.

It's so lovely! Especially with the fuzzy bits at the bottom.