not your average crochet

A little over a week ago I posted some pictures of projects on Ravelry that I would like to knit.  Well, I made one!  It’s the lace mess shawl.

This is actually the first time I’ve ever blocked anything.  Ever.  I’ve had the blocking mats and pins (from KnitPicks) for a while now, but have never needed to use them.  With this project, it specifically calls for blocking, and since I intend to sell it, I figured it would be a good idea.  Being inexperienced in blocking, I am of the hope that misting the shawl with a spray bottle of water will be good enough — I didn’t want to soak it and roll it in a towel because I don’t have any clean towels (I need to go to the laundromat… ugh).  Do you think misting it with water will suffice?  We’ll see soon enough, but I’d rather not have to do it twice.

There’s not a row by row pattern — the instructions just tell you how to make the bare bones of the shawl and it lets you put in the holes at your discretion.  It was neat not having to follow a pattern, but because of this I did end up making the shawl rather larger than the original appears to be on the pattern’s Ravelry page.  Not that that’s a problem.  It was a fun pattern, and quick too, because it called for bulky yarn and very large needles.  I would certainly not mind making another of these.

I think the yarn used is Lion Brand Jiffy, but it had been sitting in my stash bin for a long time without labels so I’m not positive.

I almost forgot — the edging has little picots where the pins are, made by implementing the knitted cast on, which I’d never attempted before.  They don’t look like very distinctive picots on my shawl, whereas pictures of other people’s shawls on Ravelry do seem to have more pronounced picots.  The instructions in the pattern seemed detailed enough, and I double checked with a video on YouTube to be sure I was doing it right, and I think I was, but they still look almost nonexistent.  Any ideas on why this might be?

Thanks for stopping by, and please leave your opinion on using a spray bottle for blocking and the proper method to make picots with the knitted cast on!  Thanks so much!