Petals

At the party on Sunday DQ debuted her new cashmere wrap. The pattern is Petals by Jeanne Abel that I bought as a kit last fall at the Virginia Fiber Festival at Montpelier.

DQ chose both the pattern and the yarn. The yarn is called Myne and it is super yummy. It feels so good and it held up perfectly well to the frogging. The colors aren't anything that I'd choose since I'm not big on pastels but it was the perfect counterpoint for DQ's dark blue dress.

The pattern offers 2 options for the edge. One is a simple single crochet but the other incorporates beads. In the picture at the left you can just see the beads which are applied in groups of 4 whereever a petal goes off the edge of the wrap. I added bead groups in other spots too when there wasn't a petal for a long stretch so that the pattern continued without interruption. It's a nice touch that also adds just the right amount of weight to this very light piece.

You may recall that my first attempt at this pattern got frogged but don't let that discourage you from trying it. The difficulty that I had was with the gently rounded shaping on the back. It requires stitches to be added at the end of the first rows and sometimes the added stitches come after yarnovers. As you can probably imagine, this gets a little wonky and it's way too easy to screw it up if you're not paying attention.


Once you get past the shaping, this is a very easy piece to knit. It's easily read and even kind of intuitive.

I really don't like working with super fine lace yarn at all and every time I start a new piece I regret it instantly. I don't hate every minute of the knit, I just don't relax as much with it as I do with other things. Fine yarn makes me nervous. The end result is what sucks me back in. It's nearly impossible to look at the light and airy wrap and not crave more.