FO: Sink me!

Odds fish, why, it's lace! Pretty purple and fuchsia lace! Sink me, but that's fine lace, is it not?

The pattern is the Blue Jeans Lace Leaf shawl, so why the archaic talk?

Well...

It started out as a lovely skein of handspun silk that I wrote about back in August, which measured about 126 yards after plying:



Using the lace leaf pattern and a pair of US size 1 needles, I knit up the yarn until reached the very end of the skein. The very end, mind you. When I did the last bind off stitch, I had no more than three inches left!

As I was knitting, I thought of what to call the resulting scarf. Berry colors suggested Summer Berries, and that was okay for a while, but last week after working all week to try to get ahead of preparing this term's lectures, I took Friday afternoon off because my brain was exhausted. Going home to knit and watch movies for an afternoon sounded like a terrific idea. What to watch, what to watch... I browsed through the streaming videos on Netflix and settled on The Scarlet Pimpernel, the version with Richard Grant as Sir Percy Blakeney and Martin Shaw as a very... robust Chauvelin. Yum. Knitting silk lace and watching the Scarlet Pimpernel was, I think, an afternoon well spent.

By the time I got through all three episodes, this scarf was forever associated with the Pimpernel. It's now my Scarlet Pimpernel lace scarf.

Now, because before-and-after blocking pictures are always amusing, here's before:

And here's after:
The blocking boards are from KnitPicks, by the way, and they work splendidly. Finished size is 16 inches on the two shorter edges, and I'll have to consult Pythagoras on third side because I forgot to measure it.

My first finished lace project. Sink me!