Estonian Lace Christening Shawl PDF now Ready!

Crack open the champagne! At last, my very first self-published pattern, the Estonian Lace Christening Shawl, is ready and available as a download from Ravelry and Etsy.


I fathomed out how to get it onto Ravelry late yesterday evening and already people have been buying. There was a minor problem in that, for some reason or other, my Paypal settings had changed so that any currency other than GBP had to be either accepted or refused manually by me before the transaction could be completed but that has all now been fixed.

I meant it about the champagne! It's just after 11am. Is it too early for a drink, do you think?? ;-)

In the Loop

Look what came in the post this morning.


Norah Gaughan's Pattern Books Volumes 1, 2, and 3. Best of all I didn't have to wait for them to come from the US or pay tons for shipping or get fleeced by customs because they have them at Loop in London! See here!

Raspberry Lemonade Flower Basket Shawl

This was a really quick knit as it was done in worsted weight mohair mix yarn (Cascade Bollicine Etoile in raspberry lemonade shade) which was given to me in a yarn swap that I took part in recently. The idea was that we swapped yarn and pattern and all made a shawl with what we received. Knitting a lace shawl in worsted weight yarn was a first for me but it was a really quick knit (took only five evenings) and I enjoyed the pattern.








I had a few enquiries about the chocolate in the post below. it's made by Bloomsberry & Co and, yes, gjabouri, it is available in the US. If you go into their website, here, and click on your country, then click on enter site and then chocolate, you can scan the full range which includes emergency chocolate, magic fairy chocolate, oral pleasure, dark secrets, Dr Chocolate, etc, etc. The US has a much wider range than we have here in the UK. We only have the core range. :-( Bloomsberry chocolate is described as "delicious chocolate infused with a delectable sense of humour" and I think we could all do with some of that now and again (more again, really!)

. . . is he trying to tell me something . . .

. . . and, if so, what . . . ??? Click on the pic if you want to enlarge so that you can read what's on the wrapper! It makes for interesting reading!

Thanks for all your comments on the Estonian Lace Christening Shawl. The PDF will be ready in the next couple of weeks and I will update my blog with the link when it is.

Estonian Lace Christening Shawl Finished

I've now finished the full-sized version of the Estonian Lace Christening Shawl. Its post blocking size is 54" square which I was pleased about because that was what I had hoped for from my calculations. However, how does one get decent pics of a thing that size?!! Taking pics of the prototype to show it in its full glory wasn't so difficult. Being smaller, it was placed on top of the dining table and I stood on some step ups to get some height in order to show the whole thing laid flat. That way, all the detail is shown at the same time. Now, with this one, I suppose I could lay it out on the carpet and swing from the chandelier whilst juggling my camera if I was (a) of acrobatic inclination, and (b) not heavy enough to bring said chandelier crashing down and me with it not to mention the fact that I might break my much treasured camera! Perhaps, a step ladder is the answer. Anyway, apart from that, the weather is dismal and dark and we're promised continuous rain for the next few days, so the pics below are the best I can do for the moment. All of the pics can be clicked on individually to enlarge them if you want to zoom in.




Originally, I had intended to just follow the prototype adjusting for size by making the centre larger but I decided against this as I wanted the full sized version to keep that 'frame within a frame' look of the prototype. So, I opted for a repeat of one of the borders and an addition of another border incorporating a different motif.


The shawl was worked on 2.75mm Knitpicks metal needles of varying lengths as it grew and I had 1476 stitches to cast off on the final round. It takes 6 skeins of Jaggerspun Zephyr wool/silk laceweight or at least six are needed (I used about 25%-30% of the sixth skein, I think).

A few close ups. (Click on each pic to enlarge further).






I'm delighted to say that I have a whole list of people interested in the pattern (if the substantial wait hasn't caused them to change their minds by now!) mainly from the Yahoo laceknitters group but also some from Ravelry and elsewhere so I've been working on creating a PDF. All of the charts are complete and all of the notes of everything I did to complete the shawl from start to finish scribbled down in my trusty knitnotes book. All, I now need to do is to the put the whole thing together.