Mushroom Or Oyster? You Decide -- Booknits Ocean Breeze MKAL

As you may remember, I am just off the tail of another Mystery Knit-A-Long, but somehow I had this urge to continue the not-knowing-what-you're-knitting torture.  I have admired one shawl by Booknits for awhile:

stormyk9's version of Sweet Dreams, project page here.

But if you just check out her designer page on Ravelry, you'll keel over from all the beautiful dripping lace borders.

This MKAL had a generous starting time, a month or more it seemed, to choose your yarn.  The idea was to pick two different textured yarns of the same shade, such as silky and fuzzy.  I ran around in circles trying to make it work, but ended up falling for two different textured yarns that were rather different shades (thank you for your excellent color help Sylvie!).

Handmaiden Sea Silk in Crema, had no idea the Swiss made 'mountain silk'!

The King of mohair, Rowan Kidsilk Haze in Blustery.

The shawl uses about 800 beads, and I wanted to use my stash.  I had two differently sized beads that matched -- the plastic pearls would fit on any yarn, but the shiny mauve beads were very thin and irregular and would only fit on the mohair.

The mystery INCLUDED that I didn't know what yarn the beads would go on... it turned out to be both.  So what I did was use the pearls with the white and the mauve with the brown.

Booknits shawl patterns are usually crescent shawls which incorporate needle size changes in order to enlarge the borders.  I found that the increases for the beginning of the shawl ended up making an odd neck hump.  I tried hard to block it straight, but then that section would pucker, so I blocked it the way it wanted to go:

The top was done with flexible blocking wires, see more about them here.

Unfortunately, this means that the 'hump' often rolls, and OF COURSE, it rolls to the visible side because of the stockinette stitch.  I find myself often trying to tuck it in, but I really don't like having to adjust my shawls too much, I start feeling a bit OCD!

Carefully tucked in, but will it stay?!

(By the way, this flower dress was a total find in a Manchester, UK charity shop for 8 pounds, I love how it matches yet clashes with this shawl.)

Those of you who have made the shawl (or have been eyeing it) may notice that my border looks different.  Well, honestly, the end of the pattern was disappointing.  I had never made a Booknits shawl and expected some massively dripping overly-Victorian lace.  I was very surprised to see a squared off border in the pattern:

Copyright Booknits, 2014

Additionally, the last patterned row didn't have any beads... but every row similar to it did.  I had oodles of beads left, so I added them as so:

And then I blocked into tri-points.  Lovely!

I took all these shots in lovely Spruce Head, Maine, smack in the middle of lobster country.  You can see the lobster cage buoys in the background of many of the photos.  We have a quaint, extremely private rental for a couple, with an excellent lobster shack within walking distance, McLoons. Message me if you'd like any extra info.

I don't make shawls very often, but this only took 2 weeks and was totally worth the sweater/top/blanket break!  You'll be seeing a lot more of Spruce Head, Brooklin and Bar Harbor, Maine in the coming weeks as I close in on finishing quite a few pieces.  I've been alone for a couple of days, it's a rarity to be by yourself in a delicious vacation spot, and some lobstermen must have wondered what loony was taking pictures of herself on the rocks.  Now it's time to go play in the low tide... see you soon!

See my Where The Ocean Breeze Hits the Sand on Ravelry

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