shetland shawl

It's been real quiet around here lately! That's not for lack of keeping my hands busy making, it's just that I've been primarily working on a large slow-knitting project. I started at the beginning of last August and am about halfway through -- not bad considering the hiatus for holiday knitting and a lot of life in between. What is it, you ask? A Shetland shawl!

On one of our trips to Powell's Books in Portland, I bought myself a book from Cheryl Oberle on Folk Shawls. It has patterns from many different countries, including Scotland. Of the Scottish shawls, the one that caught my eye (and why I bought the book) was the Fir Cone Shawl. It is a lovely Shetland style square shawl with different nature-based lace motifs used throughout. The pictures below are of the center fir cone lace section.

It's basically going to be a huge square when I'm finished. So huge that when I bought the 2100 yards of fingering weight yarn for it the woman at the store asked "what in the world are you making with all this thin yarn?" I swear she blanched when I said a Shetland shawl. It certainly is an undertaking, but I'm really enjoying it. It takes a bit of focus, so it's not great TV knitting like socks or something simpler, but we've been traveling enough that I've made some progress on planes, in lake houses, and in hotels. These photos are in fact from a plane. 

The yarn is a really deep navy that doesn't come through great on camera. It has threads of purple through it, too.  I've gotten to the border, which I'm proud to say after much consternation and swearing at picking up stitches around the center section. I was hoping to have this done in time for our trip to Scotland this year, but that's coming up soon so I may have to take it to keep working on it rather than to wear it. In any case, it will be fun to see the place that inspired the cone, shell, and wave motifs in this piece and I'm enjoying the making!