Maltese Shawl

Lest you think I have totally forgotten about knitting, I did find time to work on the Maltese Shawl on my vacation. I am on the 32nd repeat out of a total of 75 repeats that need to be done to create the center panel. Then a wide border has to be knitted on all around the edge. You can see a bit of the starting row of yellow yarn that will come out when I add the border. The pattern comes from Jane Sowerby's Victorian Lace Today. The yarn is Kidsilk Haze which I bought a year ago. The color is meadow. I am making this for my DIL and I hope she is not in too much of a hurry!

One of the reasons this is taking so long is that the pattern is very complicated, although it doesn't look it. Usually you do the YO K2tog stitches on the knit side only and then just purl back, but this pattern calls for the lace pattern to be worked on both sides. There are only six rows to the pattern, but it took me about 20 repeats before I had them memorized. They were all too similar. Then too, because of the yarn and because of the fancy left-leaning K2tog and P2tog stitches in the cross, I kept making mistakes. At one point I was ready to rip the whole thing out and start over. Instead, I set it aside for many months.

Things are going much more smoothly now but I still find I have to give it my full attention when I knit. No watching DVD movies with this one!