I love this pattern and will do it again. The pictures don’t do it justice and I will try to add more when the sun is out.

The description says: This is a little shawl that is quietly sophisticated and heavily beaded – unashamedly romantic, so airy and so dreamy with a little extra weight coming from the beads, it stays in place and feels so very, very luxurious. The open, lacy pattern is reminiscent of the art deco period, geometric, linear and yet still wonderfully feminine.

Trying Beads. Last year I used a gray Silken Kydd to make the Dancing Crane Stole and it sold for $250 at the La Salle Silent Auction. I really didn’t like knitting with the yarn, but I wanted to do another project for the school. Since I bought the yarn for $5 a skein, last year’s shawl only cost me $15 and so was a great knit.

I marked a bunch of different patterns to potentially knit, but couldn’t get very excited about any of them until I saw this one. I also hadn’t wanted to knit with beads before. Wow, I love knitting with beads!!! and don’t mind the yarn either. The beads slow me down so I think that makes the difference. Even slowing down, this is fairly quick so far.

The edge seems really tight - As I was finishing it I was reading about Color Affection and people noted that they did a yarn over between the knits on the right side and then dropped the YO on the next round. I will try it with Color Affection. This time, I think it will have to do and I am probably pickier than whomever gets the shawl.

• I saw in the original one that there were beads in the stockinette section. The pattern doesn’t mention this and in the original one, it looks like they are put in a specific order. I decided to sprinkle them randomly. Just knit a bit put a bead and then on each of the knit rows, I looked ahead a put them where I thought they fit. I also knit rows with no beads. I love the effect.
• Used the size 6 needle for the stockinette. I might have liked it a bit more with the 7 to make it lacier, but will have to wait until I am finished and block it.
• Knit the stockinette up to 165 stitches. I thought about going bigger, but don’t want it huge and one of the finished projects indicated it was big.

Finished first skein (232 yards) at row 36. I was going to do two pattern repeats of the lace, but think I will stick with one - again, don’t want it too big.

Suggestions for next time:

• To the author: Put the approximate yarn and size of each of the shawl sizes to help.
• Next time I will add a couple more beads on the center of each pattern repeat.
• Next time I will do the stockinette in a size 7 rather than down a size.
• Will do the YO between the first two knits.