At long last, here it is. My Alcazar, knit in red faux-silk rayon – blocking out on my makeshift blocking board, all thanks to the Columbus Day holiday.
What I’ve got here is a kids’ area rug, topped by some bath towels with a checkerboard flat sheet thrown on top. Over that goes the shawl, pinned out by the points. The checks are nice, even 2" (5cm) squares, and make keeping things even much easier.
I had wanted to do this bit of blocking the Curmudgeonly Way – using my blocking wires to stretch out the central square, then pinning the points out from there. What a brilliant idea! Unfortunately, the stretch coefficient of this rayon is not very high, and I ran into all sorts of problems at the corners trying to even things out. So I winged it, pinning out just the points. (Memo to self – if most lace is knit using soft, supple, and elastic fibers, there’s probably a reason why people are doing it that way.)
In any case, here’s the piece. Dripping a bit red, no surprise there as red runs and red rayon is infamous for running even more than other reds. But it’s mostly rinsed out. I still like it, flawed fiber choice and all. Now to decide whether I keep my Alcazar; or give it as a gift, or donate it to an upcoming charity auction and make myself something else.
Pix tomorrow of it nice and flat and dry, without the eye-popping Peter Max background.
String-Or-Nothing 