Stones and Tides

MC - Doodles in String MCN Fingering, color sweetness, 

CC - Undyed Natural yarn Fingering Weight.

Needles:  US #5 

Yay!  I have a finished project.
This time, not a pattern. Well, there will be one to come for this shawl, but not yet.
I really feel bad when my blog is just announcing patterns.Yet, I'm also terrible at taking work in progress photos.  I'm actually a bit embarrassed by my WIPs. My stitches are not super even (love blocking). I prefer cheap, plastic stitch markers. My house (aka backdrop for the photo) is in constant mess. Not that any of these should matter at all, 'cause obviously they don't matter to me. But they certainly don't inspire photo shoots. And I find just writing about of knitting in progress without photos seems a bit pointless.

However, I'm super excited about this new project. I used my favorite yarn in stash, Doodle in String MCN Fingering. I bought it on Etsy when the shop opened 2 years ago.  Chris is a very talented dyer, The color is so beautiful (my camera had a hard time capturing the tinge of yellow in the blue.)  It' has enough variation of tones as hand dyed yarn so the knitting is not flat in color. At the same time, it's not super variegated that I often find difficult to work with.  I actually had this yarn in mind when I designed "Thinking of Waves."  It inspired the wave theme. But my swatch kinda turned into the shawl itself back then. Part of me also felt so precious with this yarn that I wanted a even more dear pattern for it.

For over a year, I had this idea of using felted rocks for a shawl. The rocks in the shawl were felted over a year ago, To make the rocks, not wanting to buy colored fiber, I experimented a bit with feltable yarn and I used some Elann Highland Wool yarn from my stash.  I was ready to knit a shawl with the rocks using this lovely yarn, but for all reasons I still cannot explain, I was sidetracked. Three weeks ago, I finally came back to this idea and began the shawl.

I designed it as I knitted, very free-form, my favorite way to knit and design.  I  kinda knew I wanted the rocks to be closer to the border, but I didn't decide on the position until I got to the row before it. The rocks were also secured onto the shawl during the knitting part, so finishing stage was easy.

I'm in love with this shawl. It turned out better than I thought it would. OK, during the free form process of knitting, stitches were uneven, everything was bunched up on the short length of the needle cable.  I wasn't so sure if it would turn out as I sort of envisioned.  Alas, it did not disappoint.

The rocks reminded me the time Paul and I were at Syuhai (Mudanwan) in southeast Taiwan. Cold, winter day on a beautiful pebbly beach.  It was completely deserted besides us two.  We both wanted to visit it again sometime.  One of those moments and places in traveling when everything just seemed so right.