Derelict: property abandoned at sea by the owners, with no hope of recollecting it.

Meet my Derelict De la Cote D’azur, other wise known as the Shipwreck shawl from knitty. When knitty spring 09 came out, with this as its feature pattern my heart sort of skipped a beat and started longing. When my grandma then consequently kindly gifted me with a little bit of cash I set out to buying the ideal blue yarn for it. My choice soon landed on Malabrigo sock yarn, due to it being close to the recommended yarn, and because it had a Cote d’azur colourway that looked smashing.

I slaved away at this for quite some months, whilst also working on my gma’s heartland lace shawl. I started late February and arrived 20 rows into the netting at about halfway through may. Then I had exams and had to stop for a while, but when those were done I finished this within a week or two. It was rather brutal, all those beads, all that knitting. Especially those beads because they might look lovely and innocent, they’re really total bitches. Heartless ones at that. But I got through, thank the heavens.

As you might see I stayed true to the pattern. For those of you who are not knitting this particular pattern, it’s all in the second ring. The pattern author decided that the leaves should not look symmetrical, because real leaves are in general not symmetrical and actually can look completely different even if they’re on the same plant. So she incorporated this into her pattern. Now if you wish to make them symmetrical, mods have been written and can be found on ravelry. I however don’t really mind all that much, and also when I discovered the mods I was already doing the netting. Frogging is not something I enjoy, and while it might be part of the knitting world I try to avoid it as much as possible.

So I knitted on and the end result is that the shawl itself goes on for miles and miles and miles.

Here’s the closet to the actual colour I can come today, what with the overcast sky. Can you see the hairs in this shawl? Those little hairs that should not be there? Guess what those are! Those of you who are thinking: CAT!, are right. I tend to drop my balls of yarn, and the cat leaves hair everywhere (And also drools everywhere, it’s a big hairy drool ball on legs), so the balls of yarn tend to pick up cat hairs on occasion. My hair also tends to get stuck in the knitting, because I too shed hair. Hairy knitting, that’s what I’m doing here. Oh well, wool’s made from sheep hair anyway, so more hair won’t hurt it.

And here is a closeup of the beads. I used about 5500 in this project, though I ordered 6000 beads in total. (Meaning, I have some left) They were 8/0 seed beads, and I ordered 5 bags of smokey grey and 5 bags of dark purple.  I just dumped them in a giant bowl and pre-strung them randomly. They’re a bit see through, and blend in really well. They’re also made from glass so whenever I wear this shawl they feel really cool on my skin, whilst the shawl itself keeps me warm.

All in all I’m really happy with this project and tend to keep wanting to wear it where ever I go.

Pattern: Shipwreck shawl, by Bethany Kok

Yarn: 4 skeins of Malabrigo sock yarn in Cote D’azur (1760 yards)

Needle size(s): 3, 4, 5, 5.5, 6, 7, 8 mm (2.1/2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10.1/2, 11)

Mods: Aside from using different needles sizes I also enlarged the netting part of the pattern. I increased the original 56/57 rows to about 100 rows, and did 20 rows per needle size, starting with the 4mm. I also used excel to calculate how to divide the beads, but ended up altering it quite a lot.