Onward and Outward

Well, as might be expected, progress on the Progressive Shawl is slowing as the rows get longer.



For this section, I switched back to a garter ground for two reasons 1) I hate working decreases in purl and 2) I thought it would give some textural interest and also make a visual reference back to the garter center. At this point I'm withholding final aesthetic judgment until it's blocked.

When I added the most recent ball of yarn I tried the join describe by Sharon Miller in "Heirloom Knitting". Basically, you tie a square knot leaving long tails, split the plies on the tails and cut off 1/2 the strands for each tail, twist the remaining strands around the working yarn and just knit them in. This is really intended to be used on a finer yarn, but the result was better than I anticipated even with this one. BTW, for some real eye candy, lace beyond my wildest aspirations, check out http://www.heirloom-knitting.co.uk (Sharon's website).

Anyway, this puppy is starting to get pretty big. I have a few more rows of this section to finish, and then it's on to the edging.