golden

After I bound off my latest feather and fan shawl last night (first FO of 09, woot!), I spent some quality time meandering through my knitting library, my immense ravelry queue (inspiration list?), and yarn stash. So many excellent options!

What finally captured my fancy was some Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool in "Golden" (44). Not my usual color choice, but I fell in love with it when Elin knit a gorgeous golden sweater last year. I then proceeded to find it on sale for 75% off at Loopy Yarns' moving sale. As my lovely governor G-Rod would say, bleep-ing golden. What a guy...

Rod Blagojevich and his smarmy smile

Divided whether to cast on for Tuscany or a Wool Peddler's Shawl, I proceed to throw caution to the wind and instead try out Orlane's textured shawl recipe (rav link).
I’m substituting YO for M1L and M1R since I hate doing make-1s. I cast on 7 stitches.

Row 1: K2, YO, K1, YO, K1, YO, K1, YO K2.
I don’t love the edge this produces, but I can live with it.

The textured pattern is a 2 st repeat. Since there’s an odd number of sts on each side of the center st, I fudged this a bit:

Row 1 of textured pattern (including border):
K2, YO, K1, textured pattern to center st, YO, K1, YO, K1, textured pattern to last 2 sts, YO, K2.

I’m very happy with this modification.

I first cast on using size 8 needles, and the gauge was too loose, so I went down to size 6.