Scallops and sparkles

The Naloa KAL wrapped up this weekend and sending out a prize to Fiona – aka knittingfiona – for her beautiful version of the shawl this week. Fiona used BEYUL in the yurt / iceberg combination for a slightly more subtle contrast between colours for her shawl and it looks stunning:

Not only did she whip it up in a mere 7 days (!), but she added a gorgeous little detail – beads!

Naloa in BEYUL ‘iceberg’ and ‘yurt’

Thanks Fiona, for the inspiration and motivation for me to finally try beading! It was so much simpler and quicker than I’d expected.

I have to say, I went a tiny bit overboard with the beads as it was my first try using them and the sparkles went to my head! I actually had to snap some beads off to make it more subtle the other day. Here is a detail of the beading before. There are 2 less rows of beads now. Oops. What can I say? I like the sparklies! ;-B

I have to say that for a lace novice like myself Naloa is a huge confidence booster as I didn’t have to frog ONCE (ginormous thanks on that front, Renee!). The lace was SUPER intuitive and simple and even a scatterbrain like me had no problems with it.

I decided I wanted a neutral version of the shawl so broke out the CAMBRIDGE fingering I’d been testing. It is a naturally heathered version using light grey and white baby Alpaca and Cashmere, finished off with a soupçon of glimmering silk. Truly stunning. I’ve added it to the shop and will be dyeing up some colourways as soon as I’ve worked out my dyeing area in our new house.

You can see the delicate, frothy halo from the baby Alpaca and Cashmere clearly on the photo above. Click for a larger version and to get closer to the goodness.

This is now my new glamour shawl and am SO proud of it! A huge thank you to EastLondonKnit for designing this simple, effortless, beauty of a pattern.