I caved a few weeks ago when I saw that Little Knits had a huge sale on their Panda Wool. I guess the new version of it will actually be superwash but what is on the market right now isn’t. Since I refuse on principle to knit non-superwash socks I thought I could resist…until I realized that the Ultramarine color would make a beautiful shawl. I even had the perfect pattern queued in Ravelry (Gail)

I cast on after reading a lot of Rav posts about how difficult the pattern was to understand and working myself into a nervous mood. I blame that for my frequent mistakes in the first 30 rows. There has been outright frogging once I realized that the chart I was reading was only half the row pattern. There was tinking back when I realized my row count was off because I had missed a yarnover on the row below. There there was another round of frogging the entire 2 repeats I had managed to finish due to my confusion over what part of the chart was the pattern repeat.

I think the root of the problem is that it’s been almost exactly 2 years since I last knit a shawl pattern that required row by row attention to the chart. It’s like I had to learn that skill all over again. 

Totally worth the initial grief. The yarn was great to work with and the pattern was much easier than I expected it to be based on the Rav comments. I used a chart that another Rav user had made up since a lot of people had more success knitting from the newer chart. The original pattern is beautiful though and totally worth the initial frustration of frogging.

The final dimensions are 64″ x36″ and I didn’t block severely. I’ve had this waiting to be photographed for a couple days now and needed to have a clear day to really capture the great blue green of the yarn. Since my backyard is quite ugly right now I took the shawl to Greenlake and snapped a couple pictures before my 6 mile walk. It felt great to not only finish the shawl but actually walk outside in the sunshine for a bit. I think I need to do it more often.

As for the rest of my lazy beautiful Sunday… it’s time to plant some seeds in the P Patch and try squeeze in a little knitting time. Right now the only project on the needles is the Garter Stitch Blanket and in a fit of insanity I did the math this week. If I want to finish the blanket in 2009 I need to knit at least 9200 stitches per month for the next 9 months. I think I need to scheduled garter blanket knitting night each week in order to stay on track.

Perhaps it’s time to sign up for Netflix again.

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