My first lace weight shawl, my first beaded shawl, and my first Russian joins!

July 6, 2011 - started this shawl. I wound 1 centre pull skein (from the outside) into an outside pull ball = 30 min. This may save me hours of untangling lace weight yarn!

I started the shawl with a 4.0 Bates hook, the size called for by the pattern. The Bates hook seemed to be catching on the yarn, so I went up to a 4.5 Boyes hook on Row 4 of second section.

July 8 - On the fourth repeat of the second section. None of the photos yet show the true colour of this dark purple yarn.

July 11 - finished the first skein, on the 7th repeat of the second section.

July 21 - after a couple days away from this shawl, I realized I was running out of yarn on Row 7 of a 9 row border. So I frogged back to the last 3 rows of the main pattern, and frogged one of those too. Since I had frogged back so far, I dug out some iridescent purple beads. I started the border after the last 2 rows of the main pattern, adding a bead at every eyelet. On row 3 of the border now, and I’m very happy with the beads. Seed beads for rows 1 to 8, and I’m planning to add slightly larger faceted beads in the iridescent purple to row 9 (picot row).

What I learned - when I think I’ve added lots of beads, then add lots more. And some more. I tried adding beads to the yarn one at a time with a 0.60 mm. hook and with dental floss. Found going to the end of the ball of yarn and adding lots of beads at once was much faster and allowed my rhythm to continue.

July 23, 2011 - last night I got thru 1/4 of the final picot border row. I left out 1 row of the last main section, row 4 of the border and row 8 of the border. I think I’ll have just enough yarn to finish. And I had more yarn than the pattern required! I was using a slightly larger hook.

I really like the seed beads on the border (strung in bulk on the yarn in advance). On the picot row, I’m adding larger faceted beads one by one with a small steel crochet hook on each TC V stitch (DTC V stitch in British terminology).

July 23, 2011 - finished the beaded border. About 560 beads. 1 gm. of yarn left! Time to block.

July 24, 2011 - blocked!