No Two Snowflakes...

...And no three skeins of Handmaiden Seasilk, either. I had ordered three skeins of Violet some time ago and, while two of the skeins were a pretty good match, the third skein was too red to even be designated a fifth step-cousin twice removed.

Triinu's shawl, like Hyrna, has a pretty, fluted border, so figured I could drop the mismatched skein into a pot of dark blue dye and use it for the edging. As you can see here, I followed through on this inspired thought and the shawl came out looking rather pretty.


My copy of the pattern is, well, intensely hilarious, sprinkled with directionally randomized double decreases, as well as a few single decreases meandering in the wrong direction. I giggled through the body, and by the time I got to the edging, I was laughing out loud with every row. The finishing row evoked sidesplitting laughter--the sequence given for crocheting off the stitches had nothing to do with the actual number of stitches on the needle. The fact that I paid an extortionist price for the, erm, directions, contributed a final sprinkling of mirth.

Fortunately, it was easy enough to fix the errors by checking which way the leaves were leaning, and crocheting together sensible groups of stitches at the end.

And boy, there was an abundance of leaning leaves...




...and held up the the light, the pattern is both graceful and dignified.


I received one email from a reader who said her pattern had no errors, so the designer must have made the corrections in later versions. If you can bear the $30 price tag, it's a quick and pleasant knit. Ordering information can be found on this Yahoo group.

After finishing Triinu's shawl, I was depressed to note that my WIP sink* was empty. Unlike most knitters, I loathe starting projects. Find project, find yarn, find needles, experiment, repeat...table littered with notes, needles, pattern fragments, eraser crumbs...ugh

But I persevered and now have two more Niebling shawls (I need more shawls, right?) and a pretty sweater on the needles. Alas, they are too diminutive for photography at the moment.

In lieu of eye candy, however, I would like to point out the usefulness of a trained lapcat.

Here I am peacefully knitting around, when suddenly, Laptop spots an error!


She points her nose right at it so I can pinpoint the problem.


She certainly knows her Nieblings--what a cat!


*My knitting lives in the kitchen bar sink.