Echo Beach

For the past few weeks I've been working on what I once upon a time would have classed as a scary pattern. It has charts, yarn overs and dropping stitches!


I'm talking about Echo Beach. Its designed for a laceweight yarn but I had seen a beautiful sample of it knitted in Artesano in The Constant Knitter in Dublin 2 years ago. It was always in my mind and I had decided to knit it for my cousins wedding....which is in 10 days time. I think I started it a bit later than I should have BUT I'm over halfway there!

I had gotten a dress last August and wanted to pick the teal out...so I ordered some yarn from Artesano and picked the Alpaca Silk in the Drake colourway. Isn't it lovely!

Its a really nice yarn to work with. Its a 50g skein but has a good yardage in it (219yds) and the wee skein seems to last forever. I don't think I can say anything bad about this yarn....except that the alpaca does make me sneeze sometimes, lol.

So I was knitting away quite merrily, dropping stitches every now and then just to mix things up, when I had a rather disturbing thought.... I've nearly 6 repeats of the chart done but I don't think its going to be wide enough!

Sunday afternoon was spend hunting though ALL the online yarn shops trying to find another skein in the Drake colourway so I could have it on hand just in case...and emergency skein if you will. Well, said skein arrived today so I can breathe easy for another while, just the ticking clock to worry me now.

As for my project, she's getting lots of love and attention at the minute:

I'm not sure if its the phones camera, or the new laptop, but the colour doesn't show up properly on the screen (you'll need to see this on the Artesano website, its a beautiful colour)  So here we have the dropped stitches.

In the pattern there are two options for the dropped stitches,1 or 2. I went for 1 and it looks alright to me. The 2 dropped stitches just makes the pattern stand out a bit more I think.

See my cute little stitches, they're so soft and smooth I can't help but rub my face in it lol. As I said above, its just a lovely yarn and really quite reasonably priced. Without the emergency skein, the whole shawl/wrap would only have cost £10 to make....you couldn't buy one for that amount of money!

Here's a shot of what I had knitted so far on Sunday night, you can see how the whole thing will look when its done. If you look closely, you'll see Buzz Lightyear and Jessie from Toy Story on the stitch markers.... the project lives in a Toy Story project bag at the minute too, lol. Have to let the inner kid have some fun you know!

For project bags and things, check out slippedstitchstudios.com but you might get hit with the customs charges. For a more locally made project bag of any size/design, my good friend Jaele   would be willing to discuss your requirements and make you the project bag of your dreams. I've a few of her creations.... I must hunt them out and take snaps to show you.(the rubber duckie one and the my little pony ones are my favourite!)

Can't stay here all night chatting, back to the knitting!