Wow. This thing really is gorgeous. There are a couple of weak spots, but overall I am thrilled with it. It is a soft squishy alpaca cloud. I was a bit worried about the shape, and how difficult it might be to wear, but it turns out that I like circle shawls a lot.
It's deceptively warm too, thanks to the alpaca. I'm pleasantly surprised with how quickly the last part of this went. The Starlight Lace chart took me over a month last summer, but I did the whole Elongated Fountain Lace and Diamond Edging in just about the same amount of time. So that was nice.
I usually do my blocking on a futon in the basement, but it was covered in stuff, so this time I pulled out the sleeper sofa. It took about an hour to pin it out all the way, and I actually ran out of pins! I started by pinning each of the diamonds in the center, then I put a pin in the center opening, tied a string to it, and worked my way around the final border, pinning at each diamond.
I could have pinned it more aggressively, but the alpaca doesn't hold it's shape as well as wool would have, so I'm pleased with it. It's still got a generous stretch, which is perfect for wrapping around my shoulders.
Now onto the imperfections. There are only two things I'm less than pleased with, but they're not too bad and they reflect my abilities. Above you'll see some laddering that didn't block out as much as I'd hoped. I had to do that whole first section on DPNs, way back when I was still in college and a relatively new knitter. It's a reflection of how I knit at that time, and you can see my progress as a knitter as you move out from the center. I think that's really cool.
I honestly don't know why I'm drawing attention to this one, since even I can't find it most of the time. But you can see where I grafted the ends of the lace border together. This was my first time grafting lace, and I had a pretty terrible provisional cast-on that I didn't take the time to fix up. I like seeing how I progress as a knitter, so these two rough spots join such classics in my knitting history as the inside-out kitchener stitch in my first few pairs of socks.
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