In All Her Glory

Knitters and gentleman, tonight I have a very special introduction to make to you. Formally making her debut this evening, I present to you ...

Lady E!

Pattern: Lady Eleanor Entrelac Stole by Kathleen Power Johnson in Scarf Style (Interweave Press)
Yarn: Paton's Soy Wool Stripes (70% wool, 30% soy), colorway Natural Geranium, eight skeins (approximately 110 yards/skein)
Needles: US 9 32" circs
Dimensions: 21" x 76"
Recipient: my future MIL

I am so, so pleased with how this turned out. After adding a few extra tiers (maybe four?), I blocked the hell out of this baby yesterday, as you can tell from the final dimensions. I put on the final row of single crochet this evening, and it's done!

Obviously, if you have this book and know the pattern, I did not use the yarn called for; trek figured out that to do so would cost a whopping $374. I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of money laying around and I think J would kill me if I spent that much on yarn for one project (we are saving up for a house, after all) -- not to mention that this was one of many gifts I'm knitting for the holidays. I was originally going to use Noro Kureyon, but I coulding bring myself to spend even the roughly $80 or $85 it would cost me for a bag on eBay. Then, when I stopped in a Michael's when we were out one day, I came across this yarn and thought it would be perfect. When I finally made my purchase, I got lucky and stumbled across a sale! For 12 skeins of yarn and a pair of needles, I only spent about $64. And since I have four skeins left from the original purchase, I'll get another project out of it, too.

The yarn is quite lovely. It's very soft and the color changes are subtle. I does get rather fuzzy as you work with it, but I found that blocking smoothed the fabric out well. One (potential) downside to this yarn is that is does not stand up well to frogging. Maybe this won't bother you if you're the kind of knitter who never makes mistakes, but I'm not that kind of knitter. There were a few instances where I wasn't paying attention and made a mistake like decreasing on the wrong end of the row, and then I found myself having to rip back the whole rectangle or triangle -- which usually meant literally ripping the yarn away from itself where it had kind of fused to itself. On the other hand, this property made for very easy connecting of new skeins of yarn -- felted joins all around.

I'm still undecided about what to do with the leftover yarn. I would like to see how this yarn felts up, so I am thinking perhaps of some felted pillows or another, bigger French Market Bag to hold WIPs. I won't get to either just yet, as there are still just a few more holiday projects to do!

Tonight, I leave you with a pictorial timeline of Lady E's life to date. You've seen some of these shots before, but now they are all lined up with a final shot at the end. Enjoy.