Princess, finished!

My dear Princess, finally you are mine. You have been such good company all spring and summer. I'm gonna miss you!

Yarn Zegna Baruffa "Diamante" 196g 2/28nm from Colourmart.com. Knitted with 2.5mm Addi Lace circulars (60cm and 80cm, but the 80cm is too long for this project, even if it is enormous). Pattern Sharon Miller, Heirloom Knitting. Original pattern shawl has two more border repeats (feathers). Mine has nine feathers because my yarn is a 2-ply Measures: top width 2.7m! Top to tip about 1.4m. I seems like my spare time maths is quite accurate too. I got my Princess exactly the way I wanted it.

I feel a bit empty. What am I to do now? Start a new project? Well, yes, I will :-)

Princess, aiming at the edge

Closer and closer to the edge. About 11 edging points left (18 on the picture shown below).

Getting around the corner

Two edging points with double joins before the corner and the same after the corner is enough to get a flat corner. I prefer not having too many increased joins at corners otherwise the lacy effect disappears. A knitted lace shawl shall be transparent, not opaque :-)

Princess centre

The Princess after soft blocking. It was not easily performed because of the size. Can you see the error? I have decided I can't ;-) I was right about the centre, this was the way to go otherwise the suggested No of rows of the border (= pick-up stitches) would have been too many compared to the border length. I think that following the pattern would have given it wrong proportions. What would I have done without maths? At the last centre joins (about 10?) I increased pick-up speed to try to force the first and the last feather to gather a little at the contact points to the centre. I have seen this has been a problem to other Princesses. I am though not sure I succeeded, but I hope final blocking will help on this problem. 43 edging points is all that remains and a few quick fixes of small errors. I wonder if that hotel I used last time I was blocking a Shetland shawl still has the big carpet...?

Princess progress

Finally the border (about 160 000 stitches) is finished and about 5000 stitches (100 rows) are done on the centre. Meaning there are about 55 000 stitches more to go before the last tedious edging can be started. I couldn't just stick to the pattern, because when you get to the centre it is getting less detailed which is a pity. I think many knitters will make mistakes there. Sharon does not say how many pattern repeats to knit. She knitted her centre separetely and sew it in place. Thereby she probably could make a bespoke centre just big enough to gather the border neatly. If you follow the pattern, though, the centre would be about 650 rows (because you pick up one stitch at the end of every row. Estimating 3mm per row would give about 2m half diagonal length and about 2.8m total length from top to tip... :-). Therefore, at the laurel leaf insert I omitted the last row where many of the recently reduced stitches would be back on the needle. Meaning I decreased the total number of stitches into 357 from 709 (I have 9 feathers instead of 11). That will, if my approximative calculation is about right, give just above 1m length of the centre (half diagonal measure, tip to toe). Together with 70cm border and edging and another 10cm top edging it will be about 1.7m (pattern says 1.6m) from top to tip. The shawl looks as a lovely little mess. It's hard to see it will be a planar triangle... but I tried some partial blocking, and Sharon might be right "It gets alright in the end". Ihope.

Princess status May 2009

The princess border is some slow knitting. A row can take about half an hour. I have finished the first chart of the border, but there are two more to go. No problem, I am not in a hurry with this object. I realized, when knitting the edging, that rushing this item kills the enthusiasm (frogging a row of 700+ stitches is not fun). Maybe I'll skip the upper 20 rows to decrease the height slightly. Maybe I'll change the centre pattern too. I am not very fond of the Princess shawl centre, but I'll probably use the pattern anyway. Maybe I'll change my mind about it?

Princess progress

Princess shawl status:

Princess shawl

Princess shawl edging. Zegna Baruffa 70% merino, 20% silk 10% cashmere 2/28nm in colour Sugar Pink from Colourmart. I love the yarn. This pattern does not correspond 100% to the pictured shawl. I have asked Sharon about it but she did not answer that particular question...