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Waiting for Rain - Part II

The class at my LYS caused me to start my own Waiting for Rain shawl.  My stash held 545 yards of Meadow Rustic Luxury by The Fibre Company in the colourway of Fennel.  The yarn is 40% merino, 25% baby llama, 20% silk and 15% linen.  This means it is soft yet has good stitch definition.


I love this colour, but there was not enough yarn to make the shawl.  The idea of doing the short rows in a different colour and adding the stripes was not only a feature I wanted to do, it was a feature I had to do.  At the start of the class I already had the first garter stitch section completed and could get help from Sylvia McFadden, the designer, with them.  She also helped me locate a yarn to work the short rows since I had nothing in my stash.  We decided Juniper Moon Findley Dappled in the colourway of English Garden would work, even though it was lace weight rather than fingering.




I had some skepticism about this lighter weight yarn, but once I finished the first short row section, I knew it would be just fine.  Now that all four sets of short rows are complete I am doing a picot edge bind-off.  With nearly 450 stitches to bind-off, the process is taking me longer than I anticipated, but I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel and love the whimsical effect of this edge.




When I asked Sylvia what it was like to be the designer of the most sold pattern on Ravelry for 2016, she replied she needed to take a leave from her day job due to all the questions that came in through email.  She was very thankful for the attention and is about to publish another book with more shawls using different knitting stitches in the short rows.  The sample she brought to class looked like waves; it was another stunning looking shawl.

And to finish, here's another photo of the kittens, Mike & Mara.  They are growing, look how much they fill that bed now.  Mara is now 6.5 pounds and Mike is somewhere around 8.5.


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