VBLT

VERY Big Lace Thing!

My friend Gwen, knitter extraordinaire, decided that the new baby arriving into their extended family deserved a special gift. Just before Easter she approached me about the best choice of yarn for a 'traditional' Scottish Lace shawl. We looked through the selection I have in stock, and then I suggested that she try Zephyr. A lovely Merino wool and Silk blend, lace weight and strong. She thought she would need 4, I ordered 5.

The pattern is actually a lace tablecloth pattern from the 1950's by Marianne Kinzel.

Gwen has been knitting on this everyday since Easter, at least 2 hours a day sometimes more. She has 'tinked' back many times. It became clear that this was turning into a huge project (she came back in for the 5th ball) and her biggest issue was finding a large enough flat space (animal free) to block it. I suggested she come to the shop.



Saturday afternoon she and her kid arrived with tiles and a freshly soaked shawl.

I thought first that we could do this on the floor, then I decided against that! We cleared the table added a leaf and moved the sewing desk against the table. The tiles fit nicely over the table and chairs held up the odd droopy corner. Gwen came prepared in that she had created a 6 foot circle with pen already marked on the tiles.
and we began:
We carefully eased the we knitting onto the clean 'blocking' boards, actually those spongy tiles you buy from the big box store for kids to play on.
Pinned the centre and started to measure and pin the obvious straight lines.

we used a lot of pins

We ran out of pins, (if you knew how many I had at home you would find this funny) fortunately the fabric store up the street was open.

after we finished pinning every 'loop' in the edging Gwen gave the whole thing another squirt of water, despite the humidity it was drying very quickly

The finished shawl, ready for its closeup!

We met on Sunday to unpin and quickly put the shop back together. It's beautiful!
Gwen has truly created a family heirloom.