I suppose it isn't fair to call it the "shawl from hell". It isn't hard, and it is well written. There are no mistakes, and even the yarn was nice to work with, but MAN oh MAN! This thing was BORING. Holy Crap. I almost fell asleep while knitting it every time I picked it up - and not from sleepiness. That said, the person I decided to give it to will love it!
Name: Fountain Pen shawl from IK spring 2009
Yarn: JoJoland Harmony
Needles: size 5 glass needles from glasspens.com
Notes: Have I said "boring"? It is my fault though. I knew it would be boring, I just wasn't prepared for the extent of the dullness. I wanted something "easy" for a car trip. I got "easy". I should have taken something with a *tad* more meat on it, I now realize. I guess the real problem is that it isn't soooo easy that you can just go on auto pilot, and not hard enough to feel like you are really creating a work of art. The FPS lives in the ether between these two states of knitting. It isn't difficult, but you have to pay attention to most of the rows since some of them intuitively line up, and some of them don't.
I think it is the same problem I have with feather and fan. I have to count every. damn. row. I cannot do it intuitively. (For what it's Worth, I seem to be the only person that HATES F&F.) Anyway, if I hadn't purposely distracted myself with other knitting it would have been a relatively fast knit. As it stands, it took me 5 weeks. It might not sound it, but that is slow for me and this kind of shawl.
Another part of my ennui towards this project was the yarn. It was ok to knit with, but compared to the angel fart, pure silk yarn I had used on the shawl previous, it was like bailing twine. Maybe it is like Gilbert and Sullivan's "Ruddygore". The Mikado was a HUGE hit for G&S, and it didn't matter what came out next, the fans were going to hate it because Mikado was so fucking awesome! My biggest complaint about it is the colorway. I thought I loved it. It looked like 'beach in a ball' on the shelf. Then I started to knit with it. It went from beach to dirty river. Yerg.
Looking at the completed and blocked FO, it isn't as bad. It is too stripey for my taste, but I thought of a gift recipient that will love it for that very reason. I don't care for the really light, almost white, stripe right in the middle. I have another at the edge, but it is such a long series of rows, it isn't as noticeable. If that white bit wasn't there, I'd go from "eh" to "ok" on the project love scale.
Another part of my ennui towards this project was the yarn. It was ok to knit with, but compared to the angel fart, pure silk yarn I had used on the shawl previous, it was like bailing twine. Maybe it is like Gilbert and Sullivan's "Ruddygore". The Mikado was a HUGE hit for G&S, and it didn't matter what came out next, the fans were going to hate it because Mikado was so fucking awesome! My biggest complaint about it is the colorway. I thought I loved it. It looked like 'beach in a ball' on the shelf. Then I started to knit with it. It went from beach to dirty river. Yerg.
Looking at the completed and blocked FO, it isn't as bad. It is too stripey for my taste, but I thought of a gift recipient that will love it for that very reason. I don't care for the really light, almost white, stripe right in the middle. I have another at the edge, but it is such a long series of rows, it isn't as noticeable. If that white bit wasn't there, I'd go from "eh" to "ok" on the project love scale.
PS. I'm working on the Dahlia sweater again! do a 'no rash' chant for me!
1 comment:
It looks like a very pretty lace shawl pattern. It's weird because in your pictures, the colorway of the yarn is not that bad, but at SnB last week it looked muddy. Strange.
I've never done Feather & Fan so I can't give you an opinion on that.
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