theraineysisters knitting and so much more

It is finished — blocked and already dry! It is a beautiful pattern and the finished shawl feels light as air. Without further ado, here are some photographs of my Icarus.

Being cast off:

Being blocked:

Here it is being modeled (somewhat reluctantly) by my daughter in the garden:

We were having trouble taking good photographs because we had a “helper”:

Here are several closeups of the “point” of the shawl. The first was taken before it was blocked.

The second two were taken after blocking.

One reason I was drawn to this particular shawl, besides how striking it looked in Interweave Knits, was my long fascination with the myth of Icarus. As part of the feel free to scroll portion of the blog (now that you’ve seen the photographs of my finished piece), I’d like to share one of my favorite poems. It’s called Musee des Beaux Arts, by W. H. Auden. It was inspired by Breughel’s painting of Icarus falling into the sea (you can just barely see his legs in the water).

“Fall of Icarus” by Breughel

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

I’m finished. Sort of.

I’ve finished all of the knitting and have just started to cast off. It’s late, and casting off will take a long time. I think I’m going to go to bed and not worry about it until tomorrow. Otherwise, I’ll be up half the night (especially since I wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation of starting to block it).

I’ll post pictures tomorrow of it once it’s partway off the needle, as well as pre- and post-blocking.

I’ve just started the fourth, and final, lace chart on the Icarus Shawl. It’s difficult to see the pattern in these photographs because the lace is not yet blocked and because of the fuzziness of the Kidsilk Haze (before blocking). It’s interesting how different the color looks in these two pictures. One was taken with a flash and one was taken in natural lighting. The true color of the yarn is somewhere in between. The fourth lace chart has more rows than the others and, with 500 stitches or so per row, it’s slow even though the lace pattern itself is relatively simple. I should, however, find the time to finish it within the next few days.

A quick update. I’m through with Chart 1, which means I’ve finished all of the main body of the shawl. I’ve done a few rows of Chart 2. There isn’t enough of the lace border to warrant a photograph yet; I haven’t gotten far enough. I’m about to finish up my second ball of yarn and start on a third; as usual, the yarn starts being eaten up quickly once you reach a critical mass of stitches. I’ll put up a progress photo as soon as there is something to see.

I finally used up the rest of the magic ball of kidsilk haze sometime during the fifth repeat of the first chart. I have now started the sixth repeat. I don’t think I’ll need to add a repeat, which is nice. I’ll make a final decision in ten rows or so.

I would be a little bit farther on this project if I hadn’t made an error. This part of the shawl is mindless knitting, but there is mindless and then there is mindless. Here is a webcam shot (bad photography for the lazy) of the center of the shawl.

As you can see, there is a single knit stitch with a yarnover on each side. (The little red dot you can see is one of my beaded silver ring markers.) Unlike the other similar “lines” that radiate out from the center, there are no decreases that correspond to the yarnovers. That makes sense because those yarnovers (without decreases) are helping enlarge the shawl. Well, at some point last night I actually looked at my knitting and realized I had inadvertently performed a decrease after one of the yarnovers. About 10-12 rows earlier. My nice straight center line had taken an unexpected detour west.

In order to fix the problem, I had to let the center stitch, the yarnovers, and about three stitches on each side “run down” to the mishap. I then painstakingly laddered them back up with a small crochet hook, moving the center stitch back to where it was supposed to be in the first place. I say painstaking because kidsilk haze likes to stick to itself (because of the mohair) at the same time that it likes to slip and run (because of the silk).

It was a stupid mistake — easy to fix (although tiresome) without ripping back. However, if I had been paying attention I wouldn’t have had to worry about it at all.

This is a busy week for me — my son’s graduation from 8th grade is Friday. He’s been at the school since he was four! Even so, I hope to get to the lace border sometime this weekend. That’s the fun part and I’m looking forward to it.

I found out today that there is a knitalong for the Icarus Shawl. If you would like to join it, the link is:

Icarus Knitalong

There are some lovely photographs that show the back of the shawl in more detail. It’s worth a click even if you don’t feel like joining the knitalong.

shawl details