Cranberry Sauce -- Flat Out

When one has a knitting sibling who is on Ravelry and generally enjoys sharing photos of knitting online via social media, managing to complete a large knitting project quickly and secretively is difficult! Fortunately, two international flights and quite a few very dedicated evenings of knitting; along with some behind the scene breathless photo texting and....

In just over two and a half weeks I flew through nearly 900 yards of fingering weight wool in the exquisite pattern Corazona by Nim Teasdale. The yarn is the Cranberry Sauce Dark gradient by the delightful dyers at The Unique Sheep; it's a merino tencel blend which gives the yarn a stunning shine while still being malleable the way that wool should be. 

This got started on the flight to Dublin. Nothing says I can't sleep on an international flight like starting a lace shawl amongst your fellow sleeping travelers.  

Anytime we had downtime (also known as "hi my body won't make the time change insomnnia" ) I kept working on the shawl in our hotel room. While the pattern is very straight forward, trying to work on this and drink Guinness at the same time seemed like a terribly bad idea. 

Close observers will note that on the way home I was well past the Row 50 lifeline (courtesy of the Philosopher who actually packed dental floss. Shhh, no one tell my dentist).

And of course Gypsy has to help once we got home. I spent quite a few hours in our breakfast nook, knitting away with a cat on my lap while I sat at strange angles, my feet slowly going entirely numb. 

And I finished it on December 21! It was immediately blocked and the fan turned on at high speed.  Seen here, it's about 6' across the top and about 3' at the mid-back point.  It's not my *entire* dining room floor but it certainly took up plenty of space. (This picture it is (a) upside down because i didn't notice until it was dry and (b) the bottom is actually purple, this is just late at night and also the shawl is very wet)

And of course, Gypsy thinks it's a problem that I tried to wash off some of the cat fur.  She thinks all yarn should have a little extra gray cat fur added for strength and warmth.  

 

And a few detail shots! This was 888 yards of yarn; I had been anticipating making it to 900 and I'm just shy. 

I can't recommend the pattern enough; I used the written instructions and could easily navigate my way through it and check myself if something started looking odd.  This isn't an easy pattern in that you do need to pay attention but I am proof that you can indeed knit decent chunks of it while on the morning and evening commute during the Chicago holiday season. 

Now then...which teasdale shawl will be next.... possibly not this fast though!