Friday, June 29

This is a swatch for my newest project, the Mystery Stole 3. The yarn is Jaggerspun Zephyr laceweight, the color is pewter, and the beads are 4mm pearls. Melanie's supplies list calls for #8 seed beads, which are 3mm, so I was a bit concerned about how these 4mm would work in the pattern. My fears are allayed, however, as Clue #1 was published early this morning, and the larger beads will, I think, be fine.



This is my first experience with laceweight yarn, and I approached it with a certain degree of trepidation, given that it looks so delicate, and my involuntary twitches tend to be hard on things delicate. However, this yarn is very sturdy! It's also a joy to the hand, and knits up nicely.




The actual stole pattern is nothing at all like this swatch, though. This week's clue is for the first 99 rows, but it's not as onerus as that number would lead you to believe. The shape is triangular. The starting cast-on is only two stitches, and the work doesn't actually achieve the full width of the stole until the 97th row.

When my needles arrive (I hope this afternoon!), I'll start on the pattern, and do a pin-out and picture for y'all when I've got those first 99 rows done. Depending on how fast I get it done, I may well entertain you with pictures of ever larger grey blob.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And that answerrs my question about the color. You're right, the photo does skew it a bit and it looks almost undyed - very pretty, though, either way.

I see you've encountered the same pearl dilemma I did a few days ago. Buying pearls in June is a tricky business, I guess, what with the bridal industry sucking all the selection out of it. I too wanted something on the order of 3mm, and ended up with 4mm because I couldn't find the smaller ones in anything but whitewhite, which looked... cheap. But you're right - the 4mm ones look lovely on the swatch and I bet they'll be fine. Patterns were made to be tinkered with. Classic Horseshoe with a pearl - love it. Pearls before nags....