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.
Lovely. Everything is lovely in this post; your shawl, your daughter, your dog, the poem and the painting. Thank you for sharing!
Comment by Wendy in VA — June 22, 2006 @ 8:35 am
From another Wendy in VA — ditto! I’ve been looking at the Icarus shawl pattern a lot lately . . .
Comment by Wendy — June 22, 2006 @ 8:56 am
Beautiful! I too just started Icarus and, like you, was drawn to it partly because of its loveliness and partly because of the myth.
Thanks for the poem.
Comment by The Purloined Letter — June 24, 2006 @ 8:24 am
wow, that poem has always given me the shivers – thanks for including it in your post.
Great job on the shawl!
Comment by sophie — June 24, 2006 @ 11:16 am
Just stopped by your blog to say what a nice job you’ve made of that shawl. I am thinking of making it for my mum’s birthday so have been checking out other people’s efforts. This is lovely work, you should be very proud.
Comment by purlpower — June 25, 2006 @ 4:41 am
Sorry – I meant to ask you, which yarn did you use?
Comment by purlpower — June 25, 2006 @ 4:41 am
If you go back through all of the posts on the Icarus Shawl (I think you can get there from the sidebar menu or else search Icarus on the blog itself), you’ll find it. (If you linked from the KAL it’s a little harder to find). Anyway, I used Rowan’s Kidsilk Haze color 589.
Thanks for posting!
Comment by surly — June 25, 2006 @ 8:15 am
Beautiful! Absolutely gorgeous!
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Comment by brigite bardotwss — July 26, 2006 @ 5:48 am
Lovely! I think yours is the first one that I’ve seen with KSH! Did it take three or four balls?
Thanks for the picture and the poem! Absolutely lovely post!
Comment by christine — October 12, 2006 @ 1:36 pm