elephantJuice: Bunch of Grapes

I finished this last Friday, but didn’t get around to photographing it for that FO Friday, so here it is for this week!

Moonlight Sonata Scarf or Shawl version 2 by Shui Kuen Kozinski

Mods: - Knit a 3 stitch garter edge rather an a 4 stitch edge.
- kfbf for the double increase instead of the method stated in the pattern because it was easier.
- Omitted the picot edging and bound off purlwise after 6 rows of garter stitch.

I’ve called this my “Bunch of Grapes” scarf because I folded it up while I was mid-way through and thought that the way the circles puckered up, it looked rather like a bunch of grapes. The colour really added to it…

I’m so inventive, ha!

This is the cream coloured Kemps yarn that I blogged about dyeing a little while ago. I absolutely adore how it’s knitted up. The majority of the shawl is lovely warm purpley grape colour, but there is the odd splash of maroon and lilac scattered here and there.

I think semi-solid yarns are my favourite. I’m generally not a big fan of multi-coloured, variegated yarns, they’re a bit too crazy for my tastes. But give me a nice multi-tonal semi-solid and I’m happy. I just love the subtle breaks in colour. It keeps things interesting without being too outlandish.

To be honest, I really wasn’t sure about this pattern at first. I was swinging between this and the Oaklet Shawl (Rav link), and in the end plumped for this since it was a little bit different from your average stocking stitch body and lace edging triangle shawl. Although I loved the Midnight Sonata shawls I’d seen in the project galleries on Ravelry, I was distinctly underwhelmed by my version at first, and was even tempted to frog it and try a different pattern on a few occasions. It definitely grew on me though, and I’m glad I stuck with it. Watching the circles form was quite fun, and it was surprisingly easy to remember the pattern after working a few repeats. The charts were a lot easier to follow than the written instructions, and this is definitely a pattern where it helps if you can “read” your knitting.

I was thinking making it a little larger, but in the end decided to stop at the eight repeats suggested in the pattern. This shawl is a gift for my Chinese friend who was teaching me Mandarin, and since 8 is a lucky number in Chinese culture I thought it would be a nice touch to stop there. I did subject it to a pretty severe blocking which opened the lace up wonderfully, and it’s ended up a great size for a little scarflet/shawl (about a 50 inch wingspan and 26 inches from neck to tip).

This is also a pretty fast knit. It took me 2 weeks to finish, but there were quite a few days where I didn’t work on it at all. I think if I had knit a few rows every day it could have been finished in under a week – perfect for a last minute gift!