Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Simple Yet Effective Shawl

I found this pattern on Ravelry. The designer is Laura Chau. She also wrote this book. I met her very briefly at Rhinebeck (NY Sheep and Wool Show) this past October. She was there to sell and sign her book. I don't own one but might consider buying one due to this shawl that drove me a wee bit nuts.

I thought that since it had the word simple in the title I would breeze through it. Three skeins of sock yarn later and it's finally done. I picked sock yarn for this project because I thought it would wash and dry up like a great pair of socks would. Wrong. Let me refresh your memory. Here is the shawl I worked on for months...


Not much to look at in this form or the next one either...
I decided that months of my grubby hands on this piece, it might need a bit of a wash. So I had some special wool wash that smells like lavender and gave it a nice dunk in tepid water. Not hot mind you, just tepid. As I watched the water fill the sink, I started feeling sick to my stomach. Panic set in. See how murky the water is?? Does this tip you off to the next shot?
See that lovely shade of blue? It's bleeding from my sock yarn shawl. This is not hand dyed yarn mind you. This yarn is made by a big named company, Berroco Sox Metallic. I have never had sock yarn, hand dyed or other wise bleed like this before. I am so thankful that even though it says you can wash in the washing machine and dry in the dryer, I did not. I rinsed it off and hopefully that will be the one and only time it bleeds blue everywhere. I will never wash this in with any of my clothes at this point because frankly, I don't trust it. I know yarns bleed all the time but just never thought that it would happen with a product from Berroco which I have knit socks with before.

I rinsed the shawl out as much as I could. I did see the water run clear but who knows...I still don't trust it. Then it was off to the next step of blocking. I have never blocked a shawl because I never really had anything that needed to be done that way in the past. Lucky for me my friend had a brand new set of blocking wires and let me borrow them. So without really knowing what I was doing I started to thread my shawl on to the wires through holes as consistently as possible.



It took way more wires than I thought it would but there were some to spare. The cat loves to lay on my bed upstairs so I can't lay it out on the bed. So the dining room table had to be cleared off and there it will sit until it dries. Thankfully Thanksgiving dinner is over and we don't have to eat there for the time being. It's not as flat as I have seen in other photos but this is all I have to work with for now. I will check on it tomorrow to see how the drying process is going.

This post was right after Thanksgiving when I started it and now it's 2010 and the shawl was given to my SIL for Christmas. Since both my SIL and MIL read my blog, I have to be careful what I say the closer it gets to Christmas every year. I am really mad at myself that I didn't get a picture of my SIL with her shawl. I hope it brings many, many warm days to come!

6 comments:

Valerie said...

very pretty!! Well the good news is you're probably not likely to machine wash a shawl, right? I swear by those color absorbing sheets, one brand is made by shout. Anytime something with red is going into the wash, one of those goes in.

Started using them way back when ds wore those dark colored rugby shirts with the white cotton collars...Mom's everywhere must be glad those are out of style!

vlb5757 said...

Valerie-not sure what my SIL will do. I forgot to tell her that she should wash it alone. Maybe I should drop her a note and tell her that she should wash it alone. I will tell her about those sheets. I do remember someone telling me about them once. Thanks for the mention!

Susan Luni said...

Pretty shawl. I've used that pattern and really liked it.
I often block on my dining table. I just use a inexpensive cardboard cutting board to put a few pins in to hold the wires in place.

Sharon said...

Interesting the color differentiation from one side to the other. She will love it - what's not to love?!

erinkristi said...

What a great story, I hope you get a picture of you SIL in this. I'm sure it looks great on her. Didn't you know that "simple" doesn't mean "fast"? Silly knitter.

vlb5757 said...

Nope, didn't get a picture. I had my camera and never thought about taking pictures. I guess she is wearing it. Why didn't you tell me that juicy tid bit sooner???? lol! Darn it.