You may recall a few posts back I mentioned getting some amazing 100% bamboo yarn in my last exchange.  Well my yarn Santa sent me not only the two skeins of bamboo, but a great hank of Hazle Knits sock yarn in Song Sparrow, AND a stunning pattern for a maple leaf shawl from my patterns wishlist.  Which btw… I should mention that my Santa this swap was actually my rematch giftee from an earlier yarn swap!  (If you are reading this then…. Thank you a billion times!)

So naturally I got out my birthday gift from Ben… which was a fabulous set of interchangeable needles. and got right to work on making my Maple Leaf.

This leaf fell a bit earlier in the year.

I absolutely loved the pattern and color combination, but I will say I was a bit worried because of how drapey the project was knitting up that it wouldn’t hold its shape so well during blocking.  But I am very happy to report that a simple wet block and laid out flat was just right.  It has quite a bit of drape to it, but it holds the leaf shape very well.

Out in the sunshine

An indoor Maple

Now the one thing I can say about this pattern to be aware of, is that it has a large number of ends to weave in. Now that being a somewhat subjective determination, I did count and can give you a comparison.  For your average knit item its 2 ends per skein per separate piece.  So for a single skein shawl, such as this one… 2 ends would be typical.  I counted my ends as I weaved them in this morning… and came up with a total of 50!  You have roughly 2 ends per point on your leaf.  So this would not be a great travel project where you may find yourself without aide of yarn cutting implements.  *cough*TSA*cough*

But overall I loved the project… AND! I still have a whole skein left of this great Bamboo and another skein of sock yarn in Song Sparrow by Hazle Knits from this exchange!  Woohoo!

Since it was a great day… I couldn’t resist taking a beauty shot of my maple leaf out on the maple tree…. so I’ll leave you all with that.

PS – The title is from October by U2