I'm getting married in the morning.......

...well Saturday morning, but it's close. I finally have an FO to show. Here is my wedding shawl being blocked.

The pattern is Myrtle Leaf Shawl, with Willow Border, from Victorian Lace today, knitted with a variety of straight needles (I found the direction for circulars in the pattern totally unnecessary), mostly done in Jaimison's Ultra Natural White. I say mostly because on Tuesday morning I'd pretty much finished the border when I looked down to find only a tiny amount of yarn left. Horror! It was the last ball I had. I emailed all my friends to see if anyone had any and ordered a replacement ball as soon as Jaimison's opened. I have found their yarn a pleasure to knit with and would do so again, no question, but I don't think they are equipped to cope with urgent orders. I was told that the yarn could arrive "any time really", which was a little unhelpful.

I tried getting some similar weight yarn from the local stores but nowhere stocks anything that isn't bleached white or off-white. Last night I decided I had to do something. I had no idea how long it would take to dry while blocking and didn't want to risk it still being wet on Saturday. I've been spinning fine singles on my wheel with natural wool just for practice really and it seemed about the right weight and colour, so I finished off the 4" of border left with that. It isn't the most evenly spun yarn in the world but in the end it didn't look terrible. There's a slight difference in colour, but I asked Graeme to tell me which corner it was and he couldn't. It's probably obvious to another knitter, but I'm sure more muggles won't know or care.

I'm pretty happy with the results. I think I could have done with about 5000 more pins to kep everything in place, but there you go. I'll definitely be knitting lace of this size again. I thought it would be long and boring but in the end I quite enjoyed knitting it and once I'd got the pattern into my head it was pretty portable. You'll have to wait till next week to see what it looks like on (unless you're at the wedding on Saturday).