So. Handmaiden’s new Camelspin yarn, wherein my fingers thought they’d died and gone to heaven–till I went back to Purlescence and discovered Handmaiden’s cashmere yarn. There are many grades of cashmere out there in the world, some of them apologetically asking for quotation marks around the word, but this is right up there with Lisa Souza’s handspun. Wow.
Silk yarns have a tendency to collapse and go limp and long as you wear the thing; this is 70 silk/30 baby camel, and I wasn’t quite sure how it would behave. It’s the perfect kind of yarn for one of my circular shawls, which hang in such a way that they stay on the body effortlessly and the stitch patterns stay open and beautiful. But even if I’d been willing to spring for two skeins, there was only the one in the shop. I didn’t know, then, if this would pull into a hopelessly long scarf, or, if I stopped it now, it would be hopelessly too short to be worn as a shawl stretched open across the back. Width or length. Which is it gonna be.
Only one way to get a good idea: do what I’ve told countless newbie laceknitters on the knitting lists to do. Rinse it gently in tepid water and lay it out on an old white something or other overnight, still on the needles. Not a true blocking, but it does show how the pattern comes out.
And then take a bad picture of it that doesn’t show the colors well so that 
Stitch pattern: the instructions to the main body of the Michelle pattern in my book, plus one plain stitch each side. Fairly quick, very easy, 45 stitches, fingering weight, size 5.5 mm needles. Merry Christmas!