Machir Bay Shawl – Finished Knitting

Surprisingly given it is the run up to Christmas and I really should be focusing on presents for everyone I have actually got a finished item to show you which I knit for myself. Admittedly I cast this on as my late #ChristmasEveCastOn last year* and has it finished and blocked in time to wear home from my parents after the festive period was over I never really wore it that much as it was just a bit too small. Bulky in front but not enough of it.

Since I finished it I have been planning to put a border on it but never really got round to it. Since the weather has suddenly changed and got colder I thought now was just the right time to finally work out what I wanted to add as the border. I was always thinking of adding some form of lace border but I was never really sure what to put. In the end I decided on the border that came from the Dream Stripes shawl. I picked up on this one when searching Ravelry only to find I had pinned it in the beginning when I was looking for shawl patterns. And to be honest the finished shawl probably more closely resembles Dream Stripes than Machir Bay now but oh well what is in a name?

I had wondered about what to use for the edging toying between the pale blue in the shawl the multi coloured green or another colour, bubblegum blue 4ply alpaca (which I was gifted by Shelia in a previous #StitchingSanta). It was though that changing colour would be too much and I didn’t really want to “waste” the blue as it was the skein that I brought back from our trip to Copenhagen and I kind of want to add it to something special.

So green it was. I hadn’t quite anticipated how much wool it would take up and so didn’t actually cast on with the large ball that I had and had to join balls of wool twice which does leave a slightly odd stripe in the middle of the lace where the second ball was much lighter in colour at the join than the previous colour changes.

I picked up and knitted the stitches that were bound off along the edge of the shawl adjusting my stitch count so that I had cast on an odd number of repeats of the lace pattern so that I would have a point corresponding with the point of the shawl. Some where along the line I must have got my counts off slightly as when blocking the shawl I realised that the point was off by a few stitches which whilst it was quite obvious when I was blocking it I’m sure will not be noticeable once I am wearing it. I also modified the increases in the edges of the lace pattern to lifting the stitch underneath up instead of YO increases as I found these left odd holes in the side of the lace in my swatch.

I think it is much more wearable now that it has a bit more length. Hopefully I will get a lot more use from it now, I just wish I had done it sooner (not that I would have got a huge amount of use out of it over the summer. Check out my Ravelry post on it here and give it a like if you want to 🙂

*note to self I need to work out what I am going to do this year and pack it. I might finally get round to casting on my big Cable blanket but I really need a set of larger needles for my interchangables as Nikki hasn’t finished with her ones yet.