I just learned that I had won a prize in the Loopy Ewe DIC Baby KAL. Does that mean I can add ‘award winning knitter’ to my resume?

I’ve had a few skeins of Baby pass through the doors of the Spiraling workroom, two of Happy Forest and one of Blue Lagoon. The Happy Forest became an (award winning!) Woodland Shawl and a wee stocking and the Blue Lagoon is on it’s way to becoming a Red Emperor.

I wore the shawl to a family dinner in Glasgow and pants’ cousin (who we were staying with) raved over it. She loved the colours and the size (it blocked out to 6 x 2 feet) and showed me her favourite skirt that matched it, so I left it with her as a thanks when we left. She’s told us that she’s worn it to effusive complements since.

The Low Down:

The Swatch:

Using 2.5 mm / US 1.5 needles, I achieved a gauge of 9.5 stitches, 15 rows per inch.

The Knitting:

I’ll be honest, I HATED knitting with this yarn. It was like knitting twine and I kept pulling out weird fibrous bits that felt (and passed the burn test) like plastic. It was really just the great pattern (and, admittedly, the fabulous colours) that kept me knitting.

The First Wash:

The first wash turned this yarn into the miracle yarn. It bloomed beautifully, the yarn fluffed up and became soft, so soft. It blocked in an insane way, too, going from about 5 x 1.5 feet to over 6 x 2.

The Wearing:

The shawl has found a new home and I only managed to wear it a handful of times, without washing. I wore it on a long-haul flight (Singapore to London) and it kept me toasty warm, despite the laciness of the pattern.

The Price:

At $22.50 a skein, it’s not cheap, but it’s not prohibitive, either. Each skein is 4oz and 700 yards, which is enough for a decent shawl. For my woodland, I used about 1 1/3 skeins and it was enormous. When you consider that my beautiful, huge shawl that’s made someone so happy cost me around $30, you can’t really go wrong.

The Conclusion:

Even though it was a bit painful to knit with, the end result made it all worthwhile. So worthwhile, in fact, that I’ve just cast on another project in another colourway and I’m considering using my winnings (a voucher for The Loopy Ewe to buy more of the gorgeous green Happy Forest colourway to recreate my woodland shawl.

Four and a half skeins out of five.