Magical shawl goodness!

I believe I can say with certainty that I LOVE knitting lace. I mean, I haven't done all that much of it... there was that lacy hat, then my first knitted sweater, and of course the Cloud bolero, but I had never done any of that crazy intricate lace with thin yarns. Well, I guess that changed recently! I just finished my first lace shawl, using the Gail (aka Nightsong) pattern (unfortunately, only on Ravelry).

It's a fantastic design... it looks super intricate and complicated, but the pattern is fairly easy to memorize because it's very logical. I worked on it sporadically since the middle of October, and I'm really happy with the result. I used this lovely sock yarn that I picked up at Romni wools back in March. I suppose the progress of the project is best expressed in pictures:

It started as a nice ball of yarn.


Then it looked vaguely like crumpled (though very pretty) cheesecloth on my needles:


Off the needles it didn't look so hot... I even ran out of yarn four rows from the end, so I used some black sock yarn I had left over from another project.


However... with a little blocking


HOLY CRAP SO PRETTY!!!


Blocking really is magical, and I didn't even have to leave it overnight for it to dry properly. If I had known it would work so well, in fact, I would have been more careful about the placement of the points. Yay! I'm officially addicted to lace knitting...

Speaking of which, I think I'll have to find an amazing pattern to knit up with this:



Mmmm... laceweight...