Shawl Knitting - Heliades

Some time ago I told you about my friend Katie's pattern, Heliades. I had every intention of knitting it up as soon as I got it, but you know how life gets. If it's not one thing, it's another. Long story short, I never started knitting it.

Yes I know. I have failed as a knitter and a friend.

Anyway, I decided that this pattern would be a perfect use for my birthday yarn, and the shawl would be a perfect gift to myself. Plus, what a great inaugural project for my knitting bowl.

Now, you know I usually don't knit fingering weight. But I have been meaning to do more of it. Especially lace. I did a lot of lace back in my early days of knitting before I knew it was supposed to be complicated. And I enjoyed it. But I haven't done much these days, mainly because I'm so busy that I barely get time to knit any more and I like the instant gratification of bulky yarn.

Quite a difference between bulking and fingering weight.

So this is my cast on. It went pretty well. Next time I cast on a bunch of stitches with fingering weight yarn, though, I'm going to put a marker down about every 25 stitches. It seems like 25 is about as high as I can count without losing track and having to start counting from the beginning. Of course, that's assuming I could find that many stitch markers. (They're almost mythical in this house, for some reason.)

I am a little ashamed to admit that, due to the nature of lace, and my not being used to such a small guage, and my losing track of counting stitches, it took me almost 2 hours to cast on and do the first two rows.

That's right. Laugh. It's ok. I have come to terms with it. And, I have to say, that--once I got through that much--I was much quicker. Almost at my normal speed. And I'm enjoying this pattern. It's got a lot of clever little bits (like the twisted kbls and some nice decreases) that really make a difference, and that I probably wouldn't have thought of doing if I had been designing a pattern.