Ta-dah!

   Another lace project, what a surprise!!  I just can't get enough of this lace, it is so addicting!  This one's not a shawl, it's a sun hat for my niece's upcoming summer, cottage  wedding!  She plans to marry in the sunshine and I thought I would carry my shade around with me.
The hat's from the book "A gathering of lace" gathered by Meg Swansen.  Another reason for the hat, my niece's fiance is from UK and his family is from England so I was thinking I would wear this hat in their honour.  Crazy eh?
The pattern knit up fairly easy and quickly.  My handspun is 23 wpi.  Pattern called for crochet cotton or fine linen so my yarn was a bit thicker than called for so I used size 2.5 mm needles.  Pattern wanted size 3.25.  I found using this tighter knitting gauge kept the hat together more when blocking, and wow did I block!

Progress so far!!

 I was worried while I was knitting, wondering what sort of hat block I would use.  But, I found  a plastic pretzel container that I had saved for some reason, I guess this is the reason.  My dh used a dremel tool and cut the top off the container @ 3" in height and the circumfrence of the container was 22", just my headsize.

I used other ravelry's advice and mixed a concoction of distilled water, cornstarch and fabric stiffener.  Plunked the wet knitted hat into the container, squeezed out the excess, saved the excess for spraying on later after blocking, took the whole thing to the blocking board and blocked it out to circumfrence of 36".
It took a few days to dry completely but to my surprise it was stiff, really stiff.  I added a white bow, later I may change this to black as my wedding outfit is black and white.  And ta-dah here is my finished hat......

Get Ready, Get Set

Knit some more lace!..

I really am addicted to lace shawls, this time I knit a lovely pattern called Summer Affair by Carol Feller.  This is a surprise for my neice who is teaching in Saudi Arabia and coming home this summer to marry her fiance whom she met while teaching in UK.  They will be having a summer marriage at my sisters cottage.  I, of course  have this lace knitting frenzy going on and thought I would make her a little lace shrug.  Not to wear on her wedding day but just I guess to say that it's her wedding shrug and it's one that she can wear afterwards or maybe on her honeymoon.  This from the pattern:  "The delicate effect of lace weight yarn is hard to resist.  However if you don't wear shawls this shrug makes a great alternative."  Now who can resist that, right?  I can't decide whether or not to let the bride in on this surprise before hand or just give it to her as her bridal shower.  Maybe letting her in on it so that my feelings won't be hurt if she doesn't like it.  After all it is her wedding, not mine!  Right?  Would sure value any input, with thanks.