Shawl Swatches and more

don't particularly like picking up stitches so that may colour my view, but picking up stitches is not a good walkabout knitting activity.

Before I went walkabout with neighbour Ann on the 4th, I did pin the shawl out and take a few snaps of it and also of the swatches for the edge treatments.

First up, the shawl's body so far.

When I had 162 stitches on the needle, it occurred to me (duh) that I had done six garter ridges rather than five between lace motif rows. With that number of stitches the mistake becomes a design decision and not a mistake. I take the shawl out to 13 motif repeats. Yes that's right, black cat and the number 13 just for fun. I did four more garter ridges before doing an icord bind off. The unblocked hypotenuse of the shawl measures 52 inches. I calculate that the kat trapezoids will add about another 10 inches and the edgings another 6 or so. We'll see how well my estimates pan out in the weeks to come.

The original shawl design had a picot hem treatment following the kat trapezoids. I decided to expand on the Polynesian theme of my shawl by combining the wave edging & shark's tooth edging (Barbara Walker's 2nd Treasury). Both of the edgings have faggoting. When I swatched these last year I included the faggoting at the top of the shark's tooth but I think I'm going to eliminate it to create a more unified look to the edging.

Here's a close up of the rug warp swatches of the shark's tooth with and without the faggoting.


Rug warp swatch of the wave edging and the combination. I think that the natural undulation that the wave edging has will make the shark's tooth even more effective and mimic cat's claws.