While on my bike tour, I got to visit Halcyon Yarns in Bath, Maine. Needing something to do on the plane flight home, I picked up a 2 oz. cone of Zephyr and some size 3 needles, and then hit the computer at my hotel to find a pattern to match.
Here’s the result: the Echo Flower Shawl. What a fun little pattern! I love the textured Estonian stitches. I had seen the shawl knit up at a yarn store in Ohio in June. At that shop, the shawl was done in worsted weight yarn, with fewer pattern repeats to produce a moderately sized shawl. Me being me, I did it on laceweight; one of the reasons I knit so much lace is that I find the thinner yarn to be easier on my hands. After six weeks of bicycle riding and little else, I can say that knitting lace came as a bit of a shock to my hands, but I got over that in about 5 minutes. I finished the project in about 10 days.
I always like patterns that let the central shawl motif flow into the border.
My gauge seems to have closed up a little over the summer. I’m finding that my knitting is tighter than it was before and that I need to adjust my needle size up a notch to get the results I expect. The patterning in this shawl came out a bit more dense than I would have liked, although it is still well within an acceptable range. The instructions said to block the shawl as a triangle, which I did. However, some parts of the piece are a little distorted, so I might re-block it later this week and experiment with the shape. I think that might also allow me to block the whole thing more aggressively, which will open up the patterning just a bit more. Until then, however, it’s still a lovely piece!
