Starting 2010

I'm working on my swap project, but it's been going slowly because I've had no time to work on it! I keep telling myself that I finished a sweater in a week, so I should be able to do this :) I'm calling it the White Lady of Rohan. If you've read the Lord of the Rings, it will make sense, otherwise it probably won't :) Not that I think my swap partner is reading this, but if she wants to be surprised, she should stop reading now.
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Now, for the details. I'm making a handspun/millspun rectangular lace shawl: handspun cream center and millspun golden edges. I spun the cream alpaca/cormo/silk singles for the body of the shawl as a true laceweight with some slubs. I wasn't aiming for perfection but for a rustic look.

I chose the starlight lace from BW's 2nd treasury of lace patterns and charted it out. I disliked the chart, so I made the 16 row pattern into notecards on a ring that I can flip to stay on the correct row.

I cast on 125 provisionally with US 6 needles because my plan is to knit up half the yarn in one direction and the other half in the other direction. Once both sides are knit up, I'm going to add the alpine lace edging, also from BW's 2nd treasury :) If I have enough yarn, my scheme is to add the crochet edging from the Danish wrap shawls to the long edges, but I may not have enough yarn to actually do that.

This is based on various descriptions and passages about Eowyn from LotR:

-But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders...

-They were clad in warm raiment and heavy cloaks, and over all the Lady Éowyn wore a great blue mantle of the colour of deep summer-night, and it was set with silver stars about hem and throat... But she now shivered beneath the starry mantle...

Of course, my shawl will not be the blue of deep summer's night...though I've been looking for a yarn of that color for years. My partner likes gold, cream and pale blue. Rather than make a pale blue shawl, I've decided to go with cream, which is starry in my opinion. I've gotten her some pale blue sodalite stitch markers that I think she'll like.

Truly, I'll post pics as soon as I can, but I left our camera at my mom's house when we came back from Christmas so I'm currently high and dry. I'd use my sister's camera, but she's at her in-laws this week. Fie!

I have high hopes for this pattern...at least, I hope my partner likes it. She could always rip it for the yarn if she didn't like the pattern at any rate. The yarn is so nice to knit with: it just slides through my fingers, and the fabric it knits to is soft and elastic.