Last summer, a friend of mine was injured at a summer camp out. (Coincidentally, a camp out where I was giving a workshop on "Knitting as a Spiritual Practice."*) I felt powerless to do anything to help my friend, but the knitting workshop gave me an outlet: a Healing Shawl. So I bought new yarn (a beautiful blend of cooling, soothing, healing blue colors) and needles and started the shawl in the workshop. I envisioned people adding rows as I talked ... which didn't happen, but over the course of the month that it took to knit the shawl, many friends added a row or two.
It's really quite large - in this picture it's been folded to a quarter of its full size and draped over a chair.
This is detail of the stitch pattern (k3,p3, knit the purls and purl the knits).
I loved how the yarn (Homespun by Lion Brand Yarn) looked, the gorgeous range of blues, the varigated ness that does look so much like homespun. But I hated knitting with it. The acrylic felt plastic to me, it split easily, and the boucle, oh, I hated the boucle! The yarn bunched up as I knit and had to be forced through in bunches.
(To see what gorgeous handspun can look like, check out these amazing pieces: Hello Yarn's Feather and Fan Shawl and Cosy Makes' Neckwarmer. These pieces make me want to learn to spin). Sigh.
*Two books I read to prepare myself for the workshop were The Knitting Goddess by Deborah Bergman and The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice by Susan G. Lydon. I'd happily recommend them both.
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