Thursday 22 March 2007

Chasing the Dragone



No, that's not a typo. It's a shawl pattern called Heere be Dragone. I saw it a few weeks back and I knew immediately I HAD to do it. No matter that I've never worn a shawl in my life. If I don't like it, I can always give it to someone.

The pattern is available here (it comes by email as a PDF and very quickly too) and there is a KAL here. Then I needed some yarn. A popular choice is Jagger Zephyr, which comes in an amazing range of colours but sadly it's a little hard to come by in this part of the world. But I found a UK stockist called Woolly Workshop with a fair selection. I think I would have preferred Peacock, but they didn't have it so I went for Juniper. It's always a bit of a lottery choosing colours on a website, but I hoped for the best.

Anyway, it arrived yesterday and turned out to be a sort of slightly silvery dark green. Kinda leaves-of-a-Christmas-tree, feels lovely and I think it should knit up nicely.

Then I had a look at the pattern, which mostly consists of a set of 10 charts. Not wanting to go blind peering at teeny tiny symbols, I needed a spot of enlarging but Adobe Reader didn't seem keen. So I printed on A3, which worked well, and I'm now ready to go.

It uses 3mm needles for the body (3.25 for the border), and I have at least one set of straights at home. I may invest in a new circular as I get up a bit and the number of stitches becomes unfeasibly large.

To be continued...