Let there be Dragonflies - Design LF199

Its been a few weeks since I made a shawl with some black Jacob wool and this time I am using the white wool from the same fleece.  This shawl is pretty but I have a new favourite hate, bead shunting.  The way the beads are placed in this design calls for the beads to be threaded onto the yarn before you start knitting as opposed to being placed individually over the stitch as you work, which means that the beads have to keep being pushed along the yarn as you work until you are ready to use them.

I threaded 1,205 size 6 Toho beads in shade 179: Trans-Rainbow Emerald Green onto the yarn, that was a tiring job to start with but bead shunting, that takes it to a whole new level.  Who would have thought that that would make your shoulders ache like you wouldn't believe!

The yarn is another single ply yarn of light fingering weight and you can read about the yarn and the fleece it came from here.

The little dragonflies are only depicted in beads along the outer edges of the shawl and the bottom of the shawl has a "double-point" rather than a single point.  In the beginning I actually spent more time shunting beads along than I did knitting.  It got a little quicker as I progressed up the shawl and beads were used up.  I'm very happy with my colour choice for the beads as they are not a solid colour but have that iridescent rainbow effect just like a dragonfly.

The whole thing took me about 3 weeks to make and the beaded cast off was a bit confusing to begin with in terms of where exactly the bead should be placed on the stitch but I figured it out and it was a whopping 4 1/2 hours before I reached the end.

I'm really happy with the way this one turned out, despite me getting fed up with the bead shunting.  There is no other way to do this design without shunting beads but I wouldn't mind making another of these sometime in the future.