Peach lace shawl - Design F307

This shawl has been modified from a very old Peacock's Tail doily design.  The yarn that I used came to me with no labels so I don't know exactly what it is but after doing various tests on it I have ascertained that it is a man-made fibre, most probably acrylic.

I began knitting this shawl on 2nd February, messed it up big time after about 26 rows and ripped it out and started again.  Whilst knitting this shawl I learned how to do a "Russian Join", which is a way of joining the ends of two balls of yarn together to form a seamless, almost undetectable strong join with no ends to sew in as it is hard to hide yarn ends in a lace pattern.

This is the first time that I have knit anything so fine and lacy and I've really struggled with the pattern, making no ends of mistakes that have had to be undone and redone many times over.  When I finished knitting it on 18th February 2010 it looked like a bumpy crumply mess and I was wondering how to block the scalloped edge.  I was looking around the house for ideas, anything that could make shaping easier and then I spied a bunch of long cable ties.  Perfect.  Strong, bendy, waterproof and not being used for anything.  There weren't quite enough of the long black ones so I asked hubby if he had anymore and he found me a few shorter white ones, which were just long enough for the job.  The cable ties are now a permanent part of my blocking tools kit.  Two straight metal blocking rods were used for the front edges of the shawl.

The transformation is amazing.