Finished Bed of Roses

I actually finished the shawl last Sunday. I know, I know....I was just too lazy to take the time to get a good picture until this morning. In my defense, however, it's hard to get a good picture when I have to leave early in the morning for work when it's still kinda dark. That will get much better tomorrow after the clocks get turned ahead. Being a morning person I love it when the clocks get turned ahead. I get bright sunshine in the best part of the day when no one else is awake!

Anywho...back to the shawl! Since the shawl is so big, almost 60 inches wide, it's hard to get a good shot of the entire thing at once. So I opted for the safer "me-wearing-it" shot. What I didn't show you is how difficult a shawl is to wear...I mean, really wear.

I wore it to work this week and the morning I wore it I took a long time trying to figure out how to wear it and not look totally stupid. This is my first shawl (and, mind you, I will be making more) so I finally figured out why they make those stupid shawl pins. Here I was thinking they were shwag that was just not necessary. Wrong! Now I'm scouring the interwebs looking for stupid shawl pins. - Side note: as I was looking for pins I came across this posting over on the Knit and Tonic blog. This is funny and right on target!

I found some nice pins while googling. Some are way more expensive then I want to pay for something that is just going to keep my shawl on...but that's a whole other "I'm cheap" discussion. Here's a list of some good options:

• GeekGirlGlass.com - Scroll all the way down for the stick pins. The women who makes all of this beautiful stuff is actually a good friend of mine. We used to be coworkers out in Colorado. Great lady, nice work at reasonable prices!
• lesliewind.com - I like these designs...but I'd have to go for the more expensive silver ones just 'cause I don't like the gold color of the bronze ones. Gold with my skin coloration don't mix.
• Various shops in Etsy have some good ones. This will take some more searching.
• YarnMarket.com- these are OK and more in my price range

This list could go on and on and on. I hate googling for things sometimes. It could take an entire afternoon!

So I'll get on with it and just tell you more about the shawl. Here's the stats:

Needles: size 7 dpn's and 40 inch circulars
Yarn: Sirdar Country Style DK Yarn, I think I used 6 or 7 balls
Pattern: "Bed of Roses Shawl" free from Elann.com. You have to be logged in to see the free patterns but it's well worth the sign up!
Notes: Beautiful finished and an easy knit. For my first shawl it was super easy to follow the pattern. I didn't make any changes to the pattern while knitting.

And, with that...a couple more pics for your viewing pleasure:

This last one is a bit off in color, but it shows more of the finished product.