As you may know, we had a very hot summer in Europe this year. I usually knit wool even in summer, but it was totally impossible because of the heatwaves and I worked with linen and silk instead.
I knit first Iris by Ririko with a linen yarn in June-July (I bought linen yarn when they had begun to announce the upcoming heatwave in June and I congratulated myself for having the idea!).
Then, I started knitting Out of Darkness shawl by Boo Knits in late July.
The yarn I chose for the project is DyeForYarn Mulberry Silk/Lace!
The color is Withering Lupin, and for beads, I chose complementary gold.
Boo recommends Miyuki beads, but I prefer Toho! And I didn’t respect her recommendation for the size and chose 8/0 (3 mm) beads for its lightness.
I love beads and the lace-beads combination was super exciting! It’s rather time-consuming but I loved seeing the shawl growing, with these beads that add sparkles…
I also added beads to the picots – yes to all the picots – though I regretted for a while that it would be too much.
I participated into a Japanese lace shawl KAL and the deadline was August the 31st. I didn’t have time to redo the picots so I decided to block it to see how it would turn out.
And this was the first time I knit that a lacy shawl. To finish it off nicely, I bought a blocking mat and pins, which turned out to be not large enough.
So I blocked the shawl by half. When the first half was dry, I spritzed the second half to stretch it out.
And the blocking is magical! The shawl before blocking was beautiful, but it transformed into a light, etherical, delicate and sublime shawl…
And now the picots are enough spaced, I don’t find them too busy 🙂
And here is a picture with shawl just “lifted” (I don’t know how to wear it with flair…).
It’s been a fun knit and I’ll knit more Boo knits shawls for sure!
NOTES
Pattern: Out of Darkness by Boo Knits, translated into Japanese by myself
Yarn: DyeForYarn Mulberry Silk/Lace: Withering Lupin
Needles: 3.5, 3.75, 4, and 4.5 mm [US4, 5, 6 and 8] circular needle
Beads: Toho Beads, Silver Lined Topaz Light 8/0 (3 mm) with 0.8 mm crochet hook
P.S. Thank you Bev for featuring one of my photos on the pattern page 🙂