Tag Archives: Peacock Feathers Shawl

If painstakingly pinning out 164 crochet loops isn’t an exercise of patience, I don’t know what is. But after unpinning the shawl on Sunday, I decided it was definitely worth it:

I love this shawl!

Detail shots:

(The color’s hard for me to photograph; the second detail is probably closest on my monitor, but that’s really not saying much.)

Pattern:
Peacock Feathers by Dorothy Siemens

Yarn:
One ball of Jade Sapphire Lacey Lamb in Turquoise

Needles and hooks:
US0 / 2.00mm Inox Express circulars
US3 / 2.10mm Susan Bates Steelite crochet hook for the bindoff

Modifications:
I used cobweb weight yarn and smaller needles to produce a more reasonably sized shawl. Well, reasonable for me, anyway. My shawl is 60″ across the top edge, and 29″ from top to bottom.

 
Overall, this was a good knitting experience. It did drag a bit in the middle, because it was the same stitch pattern over and over again, but once I got past that, I pretty much flew through the rest.

The crocheted loops were even more tedious to work than they were to pin out. Crocheting with cobweb weight yarn is no fun. Would I do that again? Hell no. But do I think it was worth the effort this one time? Hell yes! I love the look.

The pattern, like other Fiddlesticks patterns I’ve knit, is nice and easy to follow, with big, clear, easily readable charts. If you’re thinking about knitting it, I definitely recommend this pattern!

I also recommend the yarn, though it took me awhile to get past the “oh my god it’s like thread I’m so going to break this” panicked feeling. But the Lacey Lamb is stronger than it looks; yes, I can break an individual strand if I give it a good hard tug, but it stands up to regular old knitting just fine. The yarn is soft and springy and lovely to work with. Mine bled a bit during blocking, but it’s nothing that a vinegar soak couldn’t cure.

Charts 2 through 5 of Peacock Feathers are all basically the same exact same thing. So, needless to say, by the time I got to chart 4, I was extremely bored.

However, since I finished chart 5 over the weekend…

I’m excited about this project again. I like how the feathers have been turning out – I can’t wait to see how they’ll look after a proper blocking! And now I get to move on to a chart with a different motif, which is good for my relatively short attention span.

As those of you who know me have probably already guessed, I started Peacock Feathers on the very same day I unpinned Tina.

The picture isn’t true to color – offline, it’s not quite as bright and has slightly more green in it. But other than that, this is what my new WIP looked like as of yesterday afternoon (before I knit a few more rows on it) Then, I’d just barely finished chart 2; I’m now nearly half a chart past that point.

I’d always admired this shawl, but up until fairly recently, it wasn’t really high on my list of things to knit. I think a big part of that has to do with its size – Tina is really about as large a shawl as I can stand, and Peacock Feathers, knit with laceweight, is quite a bit bigger than that. Jessica took a picture of me wearing her Peacock Feathers Shawl (knit with the recommended yarn and needle size), and as you can see, it comes down to my knees. It’s a good size for Jess, but not so much for someone a foot shorter.

So I figured that, if I ever got around to knitting it, I would use cobweb weight yarn and smaller needles.

And then a little while ago, Jen and Kristen blogged about how The Grove had new colors of Lacey Lamb in stock (a yarn I could never resist touching, but which Susan had previously only stocked in some seriously lousy colors). So, that Saturday, I went in, was immediately drawn to the two remaining balls of turquoise Lacey Lamb, and knew right then and there that it was destined to become Peacock Feathers.

I really like working with this yarn so far. I’m knitting it on US0 Inox Express needles, and I think that, for me, it’s the perfect combination.