Dorothy Siemens of Fiddlesticks Knitting gets major kudos for clear, easy to understand patterns.  This is the second design of hers I have worked and the process along with the finished product exceed all expectations.  The pattern itself was a gift from Stitchingirl Toni, whose blog is lost to time, in 2006.  The yarn is Knit Picks Shadow in Vineyard.  The Inky-Dinky Spider Stole combined with a nice strong grape ends up with a drunken spider.  Love!  Particularly nice touches were the working of edging along with shawl.  I really appreciate not having to slog a shawl when I think my knitting is done.  Somehow edgings always seem to take longer than the actual body of stoles.  Especially if you are not going to knit back backwards and have to flip it back and forth to work a few stitches perpendicular to body.

The Shawl incorporates two of my favorite shetland patterns.  Every time I see something with the birds eye pattern I am automatically wowed even tho it is not particularly difficult.  I do realize that different people call patterns by different names but here is what I am talking about:

The next pattern that I really love is what I consider to be spiders webs…. even before doing this stole.  I think of it as totally trip-y and very psychedelic.  My eyes get confused whenever I see it.  I have no idea what it is known as but to my mind it embodies Op Art and I love it.   My next project, okay current project, incorporates  it as well.

These two  patterns make up the bulk of this stole and if you can’t tell I am beyond pleased.  Knitting wise it didn’t take me much time although I started this one quite a while ago.  It has been languishing for months with a mere weeks work left to do!  Actually once I started it a year ago I was kicking myself for not working on it sooner.  I think my main reason for hesitating was fear of running out of yarn.  I ended up with over a full skein leftover so I just need to stop fretting about such things.  My shawl did end up a wee bit smaller than called for but I cannot imagine it at a looser gauge or stretched more tautly.  The extra 3 inches or so in length would mean I couldn’t have blocked it on my bed anyways.  Although yesterday, while I was pinning it out, I started musing if a person could justify buying a king sized bed for blocking purposes.

All in all January was a good knitting month.  I finished the SSK and a pair of socks for the flame and a lovely shawl for me.  I am full of stashdown Win!

yarny days and knitterly evenings plus one more shot, washed out unfortunately, of my shawl to show pattern transition: