Happy Friday, indeed! My Southern Skies shawl is finally done! Each bead & eyelet combo represents a star. Together, they are an accurate representation of the night sky as seen in the Southern Hemisphere. Blah, blah, blah…no one is ever going to know that’s Canus Major at the bottom of the photo there but it is! Only took me 5 minutes to figure that out, with a cheat sheet.
No, the remarkable thing about this shawl is purple cashmere! I wish you could pet it. It’s amazing. The purple strand is one of my favorite yarns, Superior Cashmere. Yum! They call it sport weight. I call it lace weight. I like to pair it with Panda Silk, for a bit of body. The photos don’t do it justice. I love it!
It took a while, a third of the project, to really find a rhythm. It’s a charted design that is entirely non-repeating. At it’s longest, each row was 576 stitches or 8 pages of chart. There’s no other way to do it. The consolation is it’s very easy knitting, stockinette stitch with ‘YO, K2Tog’ forming the eyelets. The beads are placed on the following row. No brainer, once you figure out the mechanics of it.
I made a couple modifications. I stopped (aka ran out of yarn) around row 120. The pattern continues to row 160. Doesn’t sound like much but that’s ~half the yarn necessary. It would have been huge had I continued. I was ready to be done though. I’m not sure pi shaping is for me. I’ll wear it folded in half most of the time.
I modified the bind off as well, subbing in a beaded picot edge to use the remainder of my beads (because of course I had plenty of those.) You can find those details here!
Now, you’ll have to excuse me, I may have had an idea that demands casting on…right now?!? (I last nearly 24 hours! Wooo!)
FogKnits 
Wow! That turned out absolutely stunning! Purple is my favorite color and cashmere too? OMG…I can just imagine the softness.
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I love how your shawl turned out. It’s absolutely stunning
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Thanks :)
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may be the loveliest I’ve ever seen!
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Thanks! I think I’m one of the few didn’t pick a traditional blue/black for the night sky :)
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It is absolutely stunning. Well done.
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:) Thanks!
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Wow! Amazing work and and colors. Really inspiring.
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Thanks!
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This is beautiful. You should sell your creations on Etsy. The color is one of my favorites.
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Thank you! As luck would have it, I do have an Etsy shop! http://www.FogKnits.etsy.com Unfortunately pieces like this don’t make it into the shop often as the price is higher than most people would like to pay. Something like this is about $600.
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Kudos! That is a beautiful and worthy project!
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Thanks :)
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