The Right Tool for the Shawl

Having the right tool in the garden is essential. I've learned this the hard way on many occasions. Struggling with a badly sharpened pair of clippers does more harm than good. Trying to dig a hole with the wrong shovel will take you twice the time. Knowing this did not stop me from struggling with the wrong pair of needles for the last couple of weeks.


I've been knitting a "Haruni" shawl for a friend's wedding. When I started knitting, the only 3mm needles that I could find were some short poplar straights. These were fine for the first couple of inches, but about midway through the body of the shawl it began to weigh on the ends of my needles. I struggled forward until the day I realized that I was knitting with my head cocked at an alarming angle and one needle balanced on my leg. The other needle was perpendicular to the ceiling. My back was bent and my wrists were burning. I stopped, searched for my credit card and went online to order a 3mm circular needle. I don't want to have to tell my grandchildren the story of the shawl that gave grandma a hump.


The needle I ordered is a Knit Pro Symfonie circular. After slipping all of my stitches over to the new needle I took it for a test drive. It's the difference between eating a tin of spam with chop sticks in a cold February rain and being fed homemade waffles on a sunny Sunday morning in bed with your beloved. These needles are fantastic. They are light with just the right amount of grip. The points are expertly pointy. The purple cord and dyed wood are stylin' and the joins are smooth. I'm at a point where it's taking me about an hour to complete 8 rows of knitting, but the needles are making it a pleasure. I can't really think about the fact that I'm about to double the number of stitches when I start the border. That's going to be one of those character building exercises. Hopefully the 6 audio books I've just uploaded will numb me sufficiently that I'll knit my way to the end in a trance. It will be a close your eyes and think of England thing....I hope.
I've also started a baby cardigan in a recycled cotton yarn I bought in a moment of weakness.


I'm not wild about knitting with cotton, and this cotton (Plassard Nature, Coton Recycle) is very splitty. To be fair, it has a nice drape and the simplicity of the pattern makes the knitting tolerable. The pattern is a pretty standard baby kimono called "Bella Baby Ensemble" from "The Knitter's Book of Wool", which is a great book with a good number of classic looking patterns. The color is a soft gender neutral mint green. I can knit it without charts or counting or cursing. It's the yin to my shawl yang.