And now... the "Real Thing!"

It's a little amazing to be knitting on my actual shawl! All this fuss and bother with the chart, and the pattern, and the prototype, and hey, this is the real thing! (I had to laugh, Theresa, because I was already calling it that before I read your comment).

I spent about an hour and a half getting the shawl back on the needles after a goof-up (I wasn't paying attention, and knit about six rows past where I had intended to end my "darts" so I had to rip back, and I didn't have a life-line). It wasn't pretty, but you can frog lace, get the stitches back on the needles, and live to tell about it! I did feel a little like emulating Elizabeth Zimmermann's famous quote, that after cutting a steek, one should drink a nice glass of wine and go have a lie down in a dark room.

There's not a whole lot to see at this point (I'm about 22 rows into the knitting in the photo), but without further ado, I present "the real thing"

The shawl is white (no variegations in the yarn), and it's photographed here on a crinkly turquoise shopping bag that came from my yarn shop (don't ask what I was doing buying more yarn!) Although I'm knitting with the same 3.25mm needles as I used for the prototype, this yarn is significantly finer, and I have to pay fairly close attention to keep from losing stitches. This pattern is not one I would categorize as "easy," but it also has a pretty intuitive flow.

I'm calling this shawl the "Sallie June." There seems to be a long tradition of naming shawls (at least Faroese shawls) with a woman's name, and since I'm knitting this shawl for my mother, I had to name it after her. "Sallie June" isn't her actual legal name, and the story of her name is quite "Rocky Racoon"-esque ("Her name was McGill, and she called herself 'Lil,' but everyone knew her as Nancy!") Beatles' references aside, "Sallie June" seems like the right name for the shawl, so "Sallie June" it is!

And I'm really knitting it! The real shawl! Whee!

Listening to: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling, read by Jim Dale (I read the book as soon as it came out, but I love listening to Jim Dale!)