Bird's Nest Scarf

Bird's Nest Scarf
Originally uploaded by Sheepish.

Here we are back in the present after a bit of nostalgia with the previous picture.

This is the beginnings of the scarf I decided to make with the lovely ball of kid silk haze I was given by my secret pal. I may actually be converted on my previous dislike of mohair. That little bit of silk in this yarn really makes something special out of it, I think. The early parts of it look a bit messier than the later parts, in my opinion, but we're getting a definite pattern, at least. I'm just wondering, though, what the best way is to block lace. I've never done that before, and I was wondering if you just put the pins around the border or what. And, how much do you stretch something like this when blocking? I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Anyway, it's not perfect, but it's a definite improvement over the Kiri Shawl, and I'm satisfied with the results so far. My main problem is the vertical lines you see between each "nest". Those come from the fact that I have stitch markers placed there to remind me of where each repeat ends and begins. I'm still a beginner on this whole lace thing, and I don't want to lose track of myself. Will those go away, or is there something I should do? Or should I just give up my crutch and lose the markers entirely? I'd love to know what more experienced lace knitters think about this dilemma.

And, lastly, since we're here talking about bird nests, I need to respond to a comment left in a previous post. I've asked my husband what on earth he was doing looking down into a pole when he happened to see the birdie nest next to our mailbox. Knowing how he is, and how he loves to know the structure of things, it's not so weird now that he has explained it to me. A new mailbox has been added to the pole, and it was not attached in the same manner as the other two, so he was compelled to investigate. While rooting around for an answer to his question, he found the bird eggs. So, I guess he's not so strange after all - well, not if you don't find it odd to care about the construction of a cluster of mailboxes.