Dozens of people have worked this design by Evelyn Clark from Interweave Knits Magazine; Fall 2006. I’d put it on my Life Knitting List some months ago, and decided the holiday season of 2007 would be a good time to get started, at least. I cast on Christmas Day before joining my family for the day, and blocked it out on New Year’s Eve. I’m not certain why I put this yarn and this pattern together: maybe just because they were sitting together on the same chair.
My camera has been unable to accurately capture the colours of the shawl. Photos have tended to come out too blue; the flash obliterated colour altogether. In natural light the colours range from quite pretty to really striking – almost loud. This shawl is one you need to see in person, I think.
The Pattern
As with many (all?) of Clark’s triangular shawl, this starts with a provisional cast-on of 2 stitches. The garment is worked from the top down, allowing for sizing options. It’s a reliable process, and reasonably flexible. Technical demands are modest (except for the nupps, which require fiddling and patience), so the design is well within the reach of novice-and-beyond knitters. The instructions call for laceweight yarn, with a note that heavier yarns can be used. No surprises in the instructions.
The Yarn
Some of you might remember that in 2007 I went through my “Purple Haze” phase, trying to dye purple by mixing magenta and turquoise. A while back --in August ’07, I think-- I started spinning up the Shetland top that had been dyed in the slowcooker. I worked at it in bits and bobs, here and there. Plying started in November and finished Christmas Eve. Yarn was skeined and washed, and wound into balls on Christmas Day morning.
The idea of dyeing this fiber was that once spun and plied, the colours would just meld into a…um…purple haze. As it is, there’s more blue in the yarn than I envisioned, and more than I wanted. I really wanted it to be more purple and less blue. Next time.
I put considerable (for me) twist in the yarn, so it has a “crisp” feel, and didn’t poof up (bloom) much when it was skeined and washed. It also bled a bit of pink colour when it was washed, ‘though not when the lace was wetted down while blocking.
Knitting Notes
Because the yarn was so crisp with so little bloom, I knew that I’d be working at a finer gauge than one could work when the yarn is going to bloom and fill in the spaces between stitches. This would mean that the shawl also wouldn’t gain much size in blocking, so I decided to work a few additional pattern repeats to get extra size. It’s still a small shawl: more like a scarf. The crispness of the yarn means this is not a cuddly-soft garment, but it does have good drape and doesn’t collapse into a mass of fluffiness.
The knitting was quite straight-ahead simple. I worked an extra 5 repeats of the Budding Lace chart, which increased the total stitch count by 60, permitting an additional 6 repeats of the Lily of the Valley pattern. That meant, though, that I was short 4 stitches for the Edging chart, so I simply omitted 4 SSKs while working Row 3 of the Edging.
I’d read many comments that the nupps in the Lily of the Valley pattern were difficult to do when you worked the “purl 5 together” (p5tog) unless you made those 5 stitches very loose. I simple worked each of the 5 with a double wrap, and dropped the additional wraps off the needle while working the p5tog.
These nupps are poofier than those in other workings of this design I’m seen on the web, but quite acceptable and very easy to work.
I had a flare-up of the eczema on my hands while knitting this. When a flare-up occurs, my hands swell so moving my fingers and holding things becomes difficult, and the skin becomes very scaley – like fish skin, actually. (And there will never be pictures on the blog.) I lose sensitivity in my fingers, and the yarn or spinning fibers snag on dry, flakey skin. Judging how the yarn flows through my fingers needs constant attention so gauge is minimally affected. (I’m sure that’s way more than anyone wants to know.) The worst thing about knitting the Swallowtail, though, was the paraesthesias (numbness, tingling) in the middle 3 fingers of my right hand, and pain in the extensor muscles of the right forearm. The former is a classic symptom of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and the latter is a bugaboo that I’ve struggled with for several years. I spend a lot of the workday at a computer, so I will need to cut back on computer use at home, and there’ll be no-more knitting marathons. Getting old sucks.
The shawl turned out okay, I think. I’d like to work the pattern again.
To Recap:
Pattern: “Swallowtail Shawl” by Evelyn Clark from Interweave Knits Magazine; Fall 2006.
Yarn: Shetland top (Louet), dyed in the fiber, handspun by me.
Did you take bathroom breaks????
Amazing! Absolutely gorgeous! Guess I should get my spinning wheel out!
Posted by: LizzieK8 | January 03, 2008 at 08:27 AM
Sorry to hear you've been having health problems. I like your work-around for the nupps ... very clever!
Posted by: Dave | January 03, 2008 at 10:01 AM
I like your nupps better than mine! I did the singles and, being a left-handed more thrower than picker, had little trouble with the p5tog.
But I was a little disappointed that the nupps were not more obvious in mine - I will file your, always wonderful, advice for next time.
As for health, I can commiserate. I was diagnosed with RA this summer, with the worst of it settling in my hands. I could not knit at all during flares - couldn't even bend my left index finger. Things are better now, with meds - but then you get to worry about the meds...
Sending much warmth your way, Leslie
Posted by: Leslie - knitting therapist | January 03, 2008 at 04:01 PM
Good lord this is spectacular. Thank you for sharing all the details! I hope your hands feel better. As a fellow carpal tunnel and eczema sufferer (although the latter only my feet/ankles, hence a non-knitting factor) I can attest that these things suck. May the beauty of the Swallowtail ease the pain.
Cheers to a glorious 2008. All the best, Lorraine
Posted by: Lorraine Smith | January 03, 2008 at 05:19 PM
Very pretty! Nice alteration for the nupps; I'll have to remember that if I get bitten by the swallowtail bug.
Posted by: Cynthia | January 03, 2008 at 09:35 PM
Another alternative for completing the nupps is to slip all but the last stitch to the right needle (purlwise), then work the last stitch and pass the slipped stitches over it one by one. The P5tog (or K5tog) method yields an ever-so-slightly firmer nupp, but the difference is
really negligible.
The shawl and the yarn are gorgeous! I wondered what you'd end up doing with that Purple Haze...
Posted by: Kate | January 03, 2008 at 09:59 PM
That is beautiful work. But seven days, not including family visits? No wonder it was stressful. Rest on the laurels and knit more slowly!
Posted by: =Tamar | January 03, 2008 at 10:24 PM
Lovely, lovely, lovely. And yes, getting old does suck - my hands are doing exactly the same thing, so I'm going to spin and weave for a few weeks, and then go back to knitting.
Posted by: Lynn | January 04, 2008 at 08:29 PM
The shawl turned out very nice, Ted. I hope you can get some PT for the hands, and please take it easy in the new year.
Posted by: June | January 05, 2008 at 07:52 PM
Beautiful, Ted! As always.
Yes, getting old does suck, doesn't it?
Er, was there a bit of depression in your last post? Do you have your SAD lights on?
Posted by: D2wms | January 06, 2008 at 03:21 PM
Wow, that is gorgeous! I love the color variation, and I'm impressed with your hand spun! I might get to that level someday. Probably not soon.... LOL!
Posted by: Kat | January 07, 2008 at 10:18 PM
Email me. I have English combs, a picker and a drum carder. If you send me the Icelandic fleece, I can try to salvage it for you. If it is only partially felted or matted, I should be able to get you some decent fiber to spin.
Posted by: Kim | January 08, 2008 at 12:37 PM
I'm using a tablet mouse instead of a standard mouse at home now as I use a standard mouse a lot at work. It's helped with the carpal tunnel so far.
Beautiful work, Ted.
Posted by: Duffy | January 10, 2008 at 09:48 PM
Beautiful project. I'm always awed by handspun shawls. There's something about the sheep to shawlness that has mystique.
The only thing worse than getting old is not getting old. I guess slowing down, and coddling the joints, and looking for PT might be the best ideas offered by previous commenters.
Posted by: Laurie | January 16, 2008 at 07:31 AM
Finally catching up on your blog - and absolutely loving the swallowtail. Thanks for the detailed description of how you worked the nupps - what a clever idea. You're a smart dude.
Posted by: Franklin | January 17, 2008 at 09:18 AM
I know this might sound weird, but I find push-ups help my knitting ailments. I also get numbness in my fingers and I get knitter's (tennis) elbow. But if I remember to do push-ups, not a lot, it helps. Maybe push-ups use opposing muscle groups or something?
Posted by: Emma | January 28, 2008 at 01:28 PM
The treatment for Carpal Tunnel is so much better now than it used to be. I suffered for years with numbness and it especially interfered with my sleep. I finally had the surgery and it was wonderful. I played tennis (with the incision padded) three weeks after the procedure. I could knit the next day, although not very quickly. I have a 1 inch incision in my palm and am very happy to have it. Bev
Posted by: Bev | February 02, 2008 at 04:56 PM
what a GORGGGGGGGeous shawl! BBBBBBBeautiful job!
(and no I don't stutter......only on the web the fingers stutter when I am overcome!)
NICE JOB! :)
Posted by: jeannie | February 08, 2008 at 08:35 PM