Lilac Beaded Lace Shawl - Design L7

I wanted to make another spectacular shawl as I've not done any fine lace knitting for a while.  I chose a lovely lilac lace weight yarn that I got from Solstice Yarns, which is 50% Baby Suri Alpaca, 30% Merino and 20% Silk.  Suri alpaca is the rarer breed of alpacas, the one with the incredibly long hair, as opposed to the normal, fluffy, Huacaya alpaca that you are probably more familiar with.

I loved making the heavily beaded scalloped shawl that I made with my own hand-spun Shetland wool so much that I am going to make it again using this yarn and Size 8 Toho round seed beads in shade 928 Rainbow Rosaline Opaque.  I started knitting on 7th September.

I took lots of work-in-progress photos so you can see the shawl growing.

I finished this on 4th November 2015.  The pictured below show before soaking and blocking and during the blocking process.  Blocking really makes a difference to the finished item, especially so with lace shawls.

The alpaca/wool/silk blend is so lightweight and drapes beautifully.  There are 5,083 beads on this shawl and the beads weigh more than the yarn does.  I used 68g of yarn and the shawl weighed 185g, meaning that the beads weighed 117g.