Blumengruss Shawl

I am writing again!!
After months not updated my page here, here I am!! Back from the corner. Lots of reasons that I could tell, from being super busy since February at work (always came home late even my mom complaint about it :p) and it give just more exhausted feeling in the night that I could only pick up my needle just during the weekend!

But then I have good news!! Already have new compie, a Dell Latitude D630 Notebook actually. After some time searching and been tempted to choose either I-Mac or regular notebook, my options fall to this one.

Wont be keep you all bored with non-knitting related (if there still reader on my page after months being neglected), why don’t I update you all with my latest finished object… BLUMENGRUSS.

Yeah, the pattern is from the in-famous Japanese Knitting Book “New Style of Heirloom Knitting” (ISBN: 4-529-03992-7). Same like other book owners, we fall in love with most or all the pattern from this book. The Aran and Fair-Isle wears such as sweater, hat and vest, also Shetland-kind of shawls. There are 3 shawls patterns in this book which are Blumengruss, Mountainash and Mondnacht, and all of 3 is being admired and put in the To-Knit-List. If you like to knot Mountainash, you can check out Grumperina’s blog. She has finished the very beautiful shawl.

Some other knitters also has finished their Blumengruss shawl which I felt I been helped a lot to understand the patterns such as Tres Chic Veronique, and I wished I found this site to help me translate or understanding Blumengruss pattern earlier! Would save lots of time with the border pattern.

For my Blumengruss, my choice of yarns is very limited here, so I picked DMC yarns, total I am using 4 colors: PINK (main color), Pale/Salem Pink, White and Maroon. This project was started since last year, then I was put it down due I have some difficulty to define the color combination I like. The started on October 07, 2007 (about a year ago!)

Even after got this colors I was felt hesitate to picked up this shawl for some reason. I was even worked on something else... like this baby wear set…a vest, a hat and pairs of shoes/boot

Pattern : Japanese Baby Knitting Book (for the vest – pattern no.23 (ISBN: 4-8347-2457-3)
Yarn: material is acrylic – don’t have the ball band since I got this from my brother stash.
Needles: Tulip Crochet Hook (3/0 and 4/0).
Finished Date: March 29, 2008 (I was worked these about 2-3 weeks).

The original pattern has some badges, but I didn’t the put those, instead I change a bit by give some colors block on the back side, where I combined color light blue and dark blue. The hat was taken from others pattern and at this time I already forgot which patterns I taken. I just remembered that the pom-pom was added to cheer give something to cheer it up.
The baby set was for my sister work-colleague which someone I knew too and the baby (as you already could guess) is a baby boy!! :-)

Now we are back to my Blumengruss, here are some of the WIP picts if you would like to see

This pattern actually is not hard, but somehow I misread the diagram. Instead of starting the border on the bottom (down side of the triangle) I was working on the shorter side (left/right side), which off course I always ended up with only ½ parts of total stitches from diagram shown. So I did tinked. And not just once, but 3 times !! Imagine the time I spent to knitted-tinked-knitted-tinked. Then I re-read the pattern again and again, and guess my mind was got it right this time.
The border is 10 rows repeat patterns. I can memorized it after the 4th time I re-knit the border on the correct side. He.. he.. I really suggest, if you are like to work with the border and knit it directly to the main part, better take time to familiarize the pattern with other yarn. I use a bigger cotton yarn to understand this border pattern.

When the 3rd side of border has been finished, I struggled with the Kitchener stitch to sew the beginning row from 1st side of border. After spent few hours learning about Kitchener stitch, I finished this shawl! Feels so great! You are the knitters with long time and some adventures already familiar with this kind of feeling.

So next day I take this beauty on the bath (after took all the safety pin off course).

So, here the beauty under the sun, after took some nice bath. I use apple shampoo and whoa.. the bath really took away the dirt (for sure after months of put it down and during I am working this).

We have very sunny day lately, and even I put this under the shadow when I dried it, took only about 2 hours.

I am not blocked this shawl properly, just gave some weight to make the center pointed nicely.

Finished Size; 200 cms x 150 cms

Pattern: Blumengruss (New Style of Heirloom Knitting ISBN: ISBN: 4-529-03992-7)
Yarn: DMC Color 53326 (Dark Pink - 1 balls is dye lot 19, the other one doesn’t have), Color B5200 (White), Color 5818 (Salem Pink, dye lot 51), Color 5813 (Maroon, dye lot 33).
Needles: INOX Circular Needle 3 cm, 3 ¼ cm and 3 ½ cm.
Time: Oct 07 2007 – Oct 01 2008.