Rock Island, part 2

I left you last (several weeks ago now) with a shawl teaser.

I think I pretty much said all the needed to be said about the making of this shawl, all that was left was some project photos and the story of how they came to be.

Well, back at the end of June I found myself killing some time before a tattoo appointment in a park on the lower East Side of NYC. The weather was gorgeous and my Mr. and I were enjoying people watching on a Sunday morning, when I suddenly realized that I had a shawl with me that had yet to be photographed. I put my Mr. to work right away on fixing that.

By his own admission, he’s not very good with a camera, but with a bit of direction he managed to get some nice shots.

It was far too hot to wear the shawl for real that day. Just wearing it for this mini photo shoot made me pretty sweaty. I’m looking forward to the change of seasons so I can get a bit more use out of it.

I have several more skeins of this yarn in various shades and I loved this project and the finished product so much that I may just make it again. I also recently discovered another (free) pattern that is very, very similar to Rock Island called My Heaven which I might also try.

Rock Island, part 1

Back in April, when Rock Island was first released, I knew immediately that I wanted to knit it. You might be surprised to hear that I’m not all that inspired by lacy shawl patterns, but there’s usually a really great modern edge to most Brooklyn Tweed patterns that stomps all over those “how will I wear this frilly thing?” thoughts.

On my trip to NYC later that same month I was in the market for laceweight, but ended up with some luscious Madeline Tosh Light Merino, which is more of a fingering weight. In fact my friends and I ALL bought skeins of this stuff. Luscious doesn’t even begin to describe it, and knitting with it is divine. I never wanted it to end.

I chose the colorway Ink, since the original version was knit with something similar. The pattern starts with this endless edging, which I remember being really boring to knit. I couldn’t imagine how 800,000 feet of edging would ever make a normal sized shawl, but it did and the rest of it was a dream to knit, since it was a lot of squishy garter stitch that got heavier and heavier, hence more and more satisfying.

I know I mentioned several posts ago that I was in the midst of a project that was staining my needles blue. Well, this was it. My bamboo needles ended up a weird shade of purply-blue the more I knit on this shawl. I really thought that when I went to block it the water would be dark blue too, but the dye only bled a little.

And then it took about a month and a half, and another trip to NYC for me to photograph it properly. That’s why this is only part 1…