Color-Less

The Noro knitting complete, I am happy to be working on something with no color changes, just plain white...one white stitch after another. Very soothing.

Back in April, I was delighted to find The Haapsalu Shawl book. What a gorgeous, gorgeous book! Even though it is by far the most expensive book in my knitting library, it would be worth it even if I never knit anything from it. For awhile there it looked like that might be the case, since this book, in spite of its beauty, has no full patterns.

Instead it has stitch motifs charted. A section at the front describes how to use the patterns to design your own shawl.

These directions are for shawls [rectangles] and scarves [squares] made in the traditional Estonian manner where the body is knit with a garter border, the edging is knit separately in two lengths, and then sewn onto the body.

I ordered two skeins of Nordic Lights yarn from Wooly West. Although the website lists this as "special lace weight" it seems more fingering weight. It is 2-ply but the 475 yds/100 gr is about sock yarn yardage. I'm knitting it with a size 6 and I'll be anxious to see how it blocks. No need to get TOO anxious as this will be a long time from now.

I considered recharting this in Excel since the Estonian symbols are different from what I'm used to using, but I thought I'd try it first and see and I'm really having no problems. I started from a provisional cast on as I think I'm going to go the modern route for the edging ala Nancy Bush. I may regret this later when I have to pick up all those stitches all the way around, but I won't borrow trouble for now.

If you have Knitted Lace Of Estonia by Nancy Bush, you'll recognize some of these stitch patterns (although not the one above). Certainly for the price and for the full, detailed directions for shawls already completely calculated, Nancy's would be the book to get. I might not have had the confidence to launch into one on my own from this book, but having made a few with Nancy holding my hand, I feel better able to take on this project.

And, as usual, I'm already thinking ahead to the NEXT one - using finer yarn.

Link to YouTube video of two Estonian knitters talking about shawl knitting.