FO: Cassiope

My goodness, it's been a while... again, lol. I'm so bad at blogging now! I have all these posts I want to do, but I just don't have them written. Pesky time, ya'll. This is a shawl I finished last October! Sheesh, lol. 

This was a case of "I want to use this yarn - what can I make with it?" I bought this yarn from a Craftsy sale back in May of 2015 and I always liked it. It's Rowan Fine Art in the Raven colorway - a blend of merino, nylon, mohair, and silk. I was between projects, so I grabbed this and started hunting for an appropriate design to show it off.

In hunting for a shawl design in my Ravelry library, I came across Cassiope by Alexandra Beck. This is a free pattern on Ravelry and I had seen some lovely projects others made, so I printed it out and started going. This was a great lace project - enough to keep my mind occupied but nothing too difficult that would make me get lost if I got distracted. I definitely enjoyed knitting it.

So I was knitting along and came to ... then end ... of the pattern ... But I still had 40 grams of yarn left :/ Since I wanted to use up this skein with this project, I decided to double the border lace design. This was very easy to do after the initial set up row and I just kept doing what I already had, following the same charts. Ironically, I ran out of my yarn just 2 rows from finishing, lol. 

So I searched through my stash yet again to find something that would work for just the i-cord bind off section. I originally thought it would be a plain black yarn, but when I laid the black next to this yarn, it showed how un-black the base of this yarn actually is. In the end, I used Cascade Heritage in Navy Blue for the bind off and it looks great. It blends in wonderfully and I'm really pleased.

I really love this shawl, and it continues on the tradition of me always extending shawl patterns to use the whole skein. Do I really knit that much tighter than other people? Or do others just have a zillion half balls of yarn laying around left over from such projects? That just seems to wasteful and then you have to figure out some other way to use it up. Craziness. 

I love the size this turned out with extending the lace - it feels much more substantial now, so I can wear it as a scarf (like I usually do) but it also gives me the option of wearing it in a fancier setting as well. We will see if any occasion like that ever occurs, but still it's nice to feel I have options, lol.

And I leave you with this picture I took to submit it for Andy Satterlund's Spooky Knitting giveaway on Instagram, lol. My sister commented on my photo with #StevieNicksWho and I was very proud.

I definitely recommend this pattern if you are in need of a shawl project that will show off a pretty skein of yarn :)

Summary:

Yarn: 1 skein Rowan Fine Art in the Raven colorway - $9.75, 0.9 skeins Cascade Heritage in Navy - Free (leftovers)
Pattern: Cassiope by Alexandra Beck - Free!
Time: 1.5 months