Knitting A Long with KNOT

I belong to a couple of chapters of the Knit At Night Guild (KANG), one here in Kingwood (Knitting in Kingwood or KIK) and one in Spring (Knitters North of Town or KNOT).  Recently both groups have been doing KALs (Knit A Long) with various lace patterns.  The KIK KAL, which I am trying to facilitate I wrote about a couple of months ago.  The one we have been doing in KNOT I just finished.

Here it is:

I think it is gorgeous but it almost never happened.

Here's the back story.

It was announced that KNOT would be doing a KAL for the summer.  The pattern chosen was the Panda Silk DK Fan Shawl and we were all encouraged to try it out.  I was not impressed by the samples as they seemed way too heavy for me and the pattern looked like a bunch of little tiny bits(the fans) that were all the same.  How could this be a fun thing to knit?

I decided I would try another pattern and ordered a TON of lace weight yarn from Knit Picks - FIVE skeins of Gloss Lace Yarn  ... that's 2,200 yards of the stuff.  The color I chose was on clearance so I did get a break on the price BUT what was I going to do with all that yarn when the pattern I chose defeated me.  I won't share the name of the pattern I was going to try as it has completely left my home for its rightful pace in the recycling bin.

Instead of crying over an unfortunate purchase I decided to discard what I had already tried to knit up in the previous pattern, I gave one skein away for the KIK KAL, used up about one and a half skeins on this shawl and will use up the remaining two skeins making hats for the kids at the local Head Start Program.

Did you notice that I did not use DK weight yarn but something a whole lot finer - Lace Weight (on size 3 US needles if you care)?

Instead of this pattern being an icky picky knit, it was actually enjoyable.  The 29 row pattern was easily memorized and if you messed up the corrections would be easy, or, in my case I just kept going.  What's a stitch or two off between friends?

The big bonus for me was that I didn't have to join all the little fans together because it was all knit in one piece...by finishing one fan then picking up stitches from it to start the next.  I will admit there were a lot of yarn ends to clean -up but I think it was worth it.

Mine came out to about 70" long by about 24" wide... a nice size for the movies.

I can't wait to show the other members of KNOT that I got it done because it looks so different from the standard DK weight shawls most of them are doing.

Now I need to decide what to knit while watching the Olympics.  Last time I made socks...this time i think it will be hat for little kids from the  Itty-bitty hats book I won as a door prize at KIK the other day.

And yes, they will be mostly pink!