Wednesday 17 September 2008

Kiri Shawl

I never really thought of myself as a lace shawl person. Though I admired their craftsmanship and thought that they were really beautiful as objects, I couldn't imagine how I would work one into my wardrobe. But then I realized that even if I were to technically knit myself a shawl, nothing would be stopping me from wearing it wrapped around my neck like a scarf, which is something that I have plenty of use for, I love scarves! So, with that in my head I set out to knit my first shawl. The Kiri Shawl. I had been wanting to knit a lacy shawl with my fingering weight yarn for a while (because even though I didn't consider myself a shawl person I knew that my yarn would lend itself very well to the application). So, here it is, my first shawl, knit in my Peacock colourway:

When I actually wear it, I probably look more like this.

I'm really happy with how the whole thing turned out. I've been wearing it casually thrown around my neck all week, even though it hasn't really been all that cold. I went to the movies on Sunday and it proved very handy in the heavily air conditioned cinema. I love how I can wear it all scrunched up around my neck and have it look lovely, but then when I take it off, say when I sit down to eat at a restaurant, and drape it over the back of my chair, it transforms from a scarf into an intricate, lacy, fascinating piece of knitting. 

The colour was very difficult to capture in these photo's, this is probably the most accurate:


Can you sort of see how there are bits of darker blue and greener turquoise? It's really quite varied in tones, but I'm not as good at photo-taking or photo-shopping as I need to be to really show off the qualities of this yarn. A great introduction to shawls.