This shawl has been some time in the making. It is my first self-designed full-size shawl pattern and it will make its début at this year's Knit Nation in the Old Maiden Aunt booth.
The yarn is absolutely gorgeous to work with. It is a new Old Maiden Aunt base which - again - will be unveiled at Knit Nation. I am sworn to secrecy, but I can say this much that this is a sockweight with some silk in the mix and that the silk soaks up the dye like you wouldn't believe. The colourway is Ghillie Dhu from Lilith's Lang-legged Beasties collection. It's one of my favourite OMA colourways and I was so, so delighted when Lilith asked me if I would design something in that colourway. Mossy green gets me every.single.time.
To the right you can see the small sample shawl I knitted yesterday to see if the charts were okay. Funnily enough I kept deviating from the charts until I told myself: "Dude! You can't just go ahead and fudge it because you think you're smarter than whoever wrote those charts..! Those are your own charts."
Yeah, I never claimed to be bright.
Quite apart from doing knitting maths until my brain hurt (thus spake the liberal arts grad), choosing a name for the pattern proved remarkably difficult. I take my hat off to people who do it for a living and I will no longer snicker at wacky names although I still think the Rowan Renew names are really funny. Naming is hard work, particularly as I know I have a slew of patterns to name and I want my naming to be somewhat coherent.
(I did eventually come up with some naming strategies, but word of advice: never ever ask Vonnie of the Life Craft for ideas. Trust me on this one.)
However, if you happen to have a great idea for a pattern name - preferably one which works in both English and other languages - or an idea for a name theme, please do leave a comment. If I end up using your idea, I'll give you a copy of the pattern as a thank you.
Foot update: I have been resting my foot a great deal these past few days and it is improving to the point that I managed an almost-pain-free Tesco run yesterday. I'm back on the sofa today with my frozen peas, crap audiobooks, and knitting. It's a hard life..