Vanessa Ives Shawl

I finished the mystery knit along Monday night and stayed up too late trying to figure out how to block it! Here is the finished shawl:

The pattern is Vanessa Ives MKAL by bunnymuff. I knit the shawl using Knit Picks Stroll Tonal yarn in Raven with a small section of the Train Station colorway. This was my first knit project with beads and I now know beads are not my favorite, but they do look pretty. The pattern calls for lots of beads intermingled in the bottom section, but I decided to not add the beads on the decreases and only in the small clusters at the points.

Below are two close ups of the lace. You can see the small amount of grey/black yarn (Train Station) towards the top at the first set of triangles. The beads are more noticeable in the second photo taken at an angle, they are primarily located along the sides of the top two sets of triangles with small clusters at the tip of the bottom diamond and below the large holes at the bottom (in person they glisten in the light).

I've also included a photo from blocking. As I mentioned above I had some difficulty trying to figure out how to block this shawl. My blocking mats were not large enough to spread the shawl out its entire length so I finally decided to fold it in half and used a yardstick to keep the center of the shawl taught. How people decide to block lace is very interesting, some people knitting this shawl made fewer or more drastic points along the bottom and some people left the edge smooth.

I think I want a set of lace blocking wires now, it seems like they would help make blocking easier. Do you have experience using lace blocking wires? Let me know how much you like them and leave your blocking tips in the comments.