Sleep, sleep, little bird

I'm sure everyone experiences this at some point in their lives.... I'm talking about the realisation that you've turned into your mother! I really believe I'm becoming more like my mum every year (and you know, I'm ok with that). One thing I share with my mum is a mutual love of scarves... Summer, winter, wooly, floaty... We do love us some scarves. So when I was thinking of what to get mum for Mother's Day, I thought making her a scarf would be a pretty good idea (and somewhat of a challenge as I'd only left myself a week to finish it... Eep!).

 

I found a pattern on ravelry (free!) for a semi-lace shawl which I thought might be nice for a spring scarf. The pattern is called Nurmilintu, which is taken from an old Finnish lullaby "Nuku, nuku, Nurmilintu" which translates to "sleep, sleep, little bird". This made me fall in love with the pattern even more.

I used a yarn which is part wool with acrylic mix which I found on eBay. It's a self striping yarn with white, grey, purple and a little splash of blue. I bought it because of the lovely shades but I will admit I wasn't in love with the quality of the yarn. I also think this particular pattern would look much nicer in just one colour.

 

This is the first time I'd tried lace in a pattern, and I've had mixed results. Unfortunately the first stripe of lace is a little incoherent as I didn't really understand the pattern. I spent a bit of time writing it all out again (this has always helped me understand things better, I actually have a notepad for re-writing knitting instructions)... And created something that looks even more confusing...

 

But this just makes sense for me, go figure! It did mean that the pattern repeats were reduced from 9sts to 8sts. I did kinda just start making it up, rather than 'knit until 87 sts', I knit until the end of the purple before starting the lace. I like that the colour co-ordinates with the pattern.

The rest of the shawl progressed rather nicely, and it was a real pleasure to knit. When the blocking had been done it looked really effective (relief!)

Can we just take a moment to talk about the cast off. This really pretty feature was something I dreaded as the shawl went on, it looks so complicated!! But it's a really easy (and I'm talking easy peasy lemon squeezy) cast on 2 knit wise then cast off 5 and boom! Lacy little cast off!

 

In all I'm very pleased with this, but I would like to revisit this pattern in a single colour rather than using the self striping. And I might just make a lighter one for mum in a better quality yarn... If she's nice to me (xx).