Off the needles...for now!

It's finished (on Thursday night, actually)! I bound off and wove in my ends on the Landscape Shawl. I think that the blurb at the beginning of the pattern describe it best: "Rows of eyelet separate chevrons of garter, seed, stockinette, moss, and reverse stockinette stitches..." It turned out a bit bigger than I expected, but I love it. The only thing I may do is un-bind off it and do it again in a smaller needle size to make it a bit more taught at the top edge. Still needs to be blocked, and that will probably happen tomorrow in the next 3 months.

The Knitty-Gritty:
Pattern: Landscape Shawl from Fiber Trends
Yarn: Ultra Alpaca by Berroco, colorway#6284, "Prune Mix"
Needles: 10.5 (mm) x 24" bamboo circular by Clover
Finished size: Really big (85" wide at the top x 40" long from center point to top edge- unblocked!!)
Modifications Improvements: You can knit this pattern in various weights of yarns for different finished sizes. I went with the worsted, but knit it using the numbers for the next finer yarn to get a larger shawl. I did bind it off with a size 13 needle to get a looser top edge/ I am going to think about binding off using an 11 for a bit more structure. (Although, its a miracle that its finally a FO, so I'm not hopeful for the deconstruction and reconstruction.)

The home stretch...

I have 3 more pattern rows in my Landscape Shawl. The it is Fiber Trends pattern, started in October of 2006 but has been dormant on the needles since mid December. I am using Berroco's Ultra Alpaca in a beautiful color called "Prune Mix". The color is a great shade of purple, with blue, red, and yellow in it (check out the picture below. Its hard to picture, but is coming out great. I have 3 more rows (200+ stitches each), plus 4 finishing rows, then ends to weave. I am planning on wearing it on Easter. I can't wait to knit something else with this yarn. It is really great.