On Monday, Lorraine<\/a> asked me to do a FO post on the Aran Pocket Shawl. This morning I found out she tagged me for a meme. I hear and obey! However, I’m going to do the FO post first, as I need a little time to think of 7 random facts about myself (no need to dwell on that difficulty). So, here is the Aran Pocket Shawl without pockets!<\/p>\n

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The blocking went very well. I soaked it for 15-20 minutes in water (I have so many detergent sensitivities that I usually block in water) in a big tub (which can double as a light diffuser!) and then threw it in my fancy-shmancy frontload washer with two large, dark bath towels for a low speed spin. I had trepidations (and the shawl palpitations), but all came out well. I didn’t pin the shawl but just laid it flat on towels on the floor and let it dry. It came out at nearly 7 feet long by about 2 feet wide.<\/p>\n

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The Berroco Ultra Alpaca worked well, although I would sometimes hit a stretch of yarn several inches long that was thicker than the rest. Only once was it bad enough to break the yarn and bypass it, but I didn’t like it all the same. The color is very rich and there was very little bleeding when I blocked it. I also thought it was a nice yarn to show a knit-purl stitch pattern well. I knit 25 of the 28 repeats called for, and Ultra Alpaca is a worsted weight yarn as is the yarn called for in the pattern. However, the pattern calls for 7 skeins at 220 yd\/skein, and I used about 4.5 skeins at 215 yd\/skein.<\/p>\n

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I have the second printing (copyright 2000) of Folk Shawls by Chery Oberle. The pattern is very well written, but this printing has an error. To make both ends of the shawl look the same, you need to do rows 1-15 only of the last pattern repeat before the seed stitch border; the text tells you to do rows 1-16 (it’s an 18 row repeat). I enjoyed the pattern; it was easy to memorize but not tedious. I went a little seed stitch\/basketweave crazy toward the end, but it was all worth it.<\/p>\n

This is my seventh completed project for 2007. I have the chevron scarf done too but for weaving in the ends (personally, I think it unwove the ends, as I was sure I had already done that), but that will have to wait until after I do the meme. Lorraine is the mother of two teenagers, and several of my friends here are also the mothers of teenagers (I’ve been offered many teenage children to take home–no give backs!). It’s best to keep the moms happy I’ve found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, Lorraine asked me to do a FO post on the Aran Pocket Shawl. This morning I found out she tagged me for a meme. I hear and obey! However, I’m going to do the FO post first, as I need a little time …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2,16,27],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7pEGF-1s","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}