New photographic assistant

As soon as I placed my latest shawl on the tree branch my new photographic assistant Annie arrived to assist in the only way she knows how.................sitting on the subject.  Our cat is a 13 year old black and white domestic short hair that had a Siamese father so she knows how talk, she is very loud when she wants to chat.

Anyway, this shawl has been a fun knit.  I picked up a 200g ball of 8ply double knit pure wool when we visited the Bendigo Woollen Mills back in May, it was a back room special, so I guess it is now unavailable which is a real shame.  It is a lovely wool made up of two plies, one is a dirty grey brown and the other is multi coloured in gelati colours that has a fairly long colour repeat.  I knit this on 5.5mm needles to keep it loose and soft.  The pattern is Cilantro by Amy Swenson that I purchased from Ravelry.  It is a great simple pattern other than having to keep the lace edge pattern going while following the main body lace pattern, both very easy to learn.  It's an asymmetrical shawl which has turned out really large after blocking and I can't wait to wear this one.  The pattern was designed for either 10ply worsted weight yarn or 4 ply fingering weight yarn, I'm a rebel and used an 8 ply double knit.  It doesn't really matter what you use, you just keep knitting until it's big enough or you run out of yarn as I did, I have a 30cm piece of wool left over.  Amazingly I finished on the final row of the lace edge pattern and the main body lace pattern then cast off with a nice loose lace cast off.  Knit two stitches then knit these two stitches on the right needle together through the back of the loop (just like a SSK decrease), then knit 1 more stitch and and knit the two stitches on the right needle together, continue until all stitches are cast off.