Finished Mystery Shawl

I finished the Mystery Shawl last night. I really like the way it came out. This was the fastest shawl I ever knitted - taking only 1 month and 3 days to do! If you look at the pictures, you can see the edging looks slightly darker than the rest of the shawl, that was where I joined a new ball of yarn. Fun with handpainted yarns! I actually like it that way since the darker color is basically on the edging part - it makes it look like I planned it that way. Details below, but first, some pictures.

Here it is sideways - you can see the point here.

And here is a detail of one of the edge points and you can see the beads I added. The pattern was the Mystery Shawl from the Mystery Shawl along group (button in the sidebar). I used the laceweight pattern but added a few more repeats of Step 4 to make the shawl bigger. It came out 85 x I don't know - I forgot to measure that direction, but its plenty big. I knit it with yarn from handpaintedyarn.com in the Continental Blue color and it used about 1000 yards - according to weight. It was knit on size 3 needles. I also added some beads to the edging, just to give it a little bit of weight and I used size 8 seed beads and followed Deb's technique for beading that she posted on the Summer of Lace group. I loved adding the beads! The beads don't show their color very well in the picture (the yellow things are pins - ignore them). They are kind of an iridescent amber color. I will definitely be using beads again.

Also, I have found two more uses for crochet hooks. We've already discussed that they are good for picking up stitches and correcting mistakes in knitting, but they are also good for adding beads and for opening the bead packages without spilling beads all over the cat asleep in your lap while you're working.