Flower Basket Shawl #1!

I have the (by now) traditional burst of pictures that come every now and then after a visit to GPG's. Unfortunately, the pictures I have queued up for the moment will be the last for a while, because finals are coming up (*much gnashing of teeth here*). But hopefully there will be more photos once finals are over.

Anyway, I finally have pictures of the Boll Weaver's Flower Basket shawl! I decided to go all out with the pictures, since this is my first completed lace project, and documented the blocking process from start to end. GPG has a LOT of shawl pictures saved on his hard drive now . . . I have only a few now to share with you.

Here's a photo of the unblocked shawl, just to give you an idea of how big it is:


It's a bit small. I knit with US3 needles, which made the lace very dense. The second FB shawl is on US 6 needles to make a bigger shawl.

And, of course, here is the obligatory soaking in the sink shot:


Here is the shawl, slowly getting pinned out:


I had a tough time getting the thing to block out properly. I expect that I probably could have blocked it larger than I actually did, which would have helped because it's on the small side. But I was concerned about tugging on the shawl too much. I wasn't so much worried about breaking any of the yarn (because, as the Yarn Harlot says, then I'd have to go lie in the road), but pulling down on the points of the shawl was definitely distorting the straight line I wanted at the top, even though I threaded waste yarn through the straight edge and pinned it down as tightly as I could. To keep the top from drooping, I didn't block as severely as I probably could have.

But I think it still came out fairly nicely:


Here's a full shot, with a random ruler thrown into the mix:


FO pictures to come in a day or two!

Oh, and Caitlyn was kind enough to inquire about my voice. It is much better now, although I'm still coughing a little. It was completely gone for about 5 days, then starting coming back in dribs and drabs over the next couple of days, when I sounded like a chain smoker.

Now I'm still a little hoarse, but at least I can sing along with the radio again, which I couldn't do about a week ago. I also hope to start running regularly again, too; while my voice was gone, I hardly ran at all because I had such tightness in my chest that I couldn't breathe through the exertion. (Just walking to school was bad enough!) But I will almost certainly not be running the Houston marathon next year, at this rate--I'm even farther behind with training than I was last year, which was already pretty bad. I have to bump down to the half.

More to come soon!