April 18th--
Hey! It’s my first knitted shawl(ette)!

(Also, I think it’s my first time knitting with fingering weight yarn, though I’ve knitted a very few rows of laceweight… and then promptly set that project aside forever and ever.)

I agonized between this pattern and the Holden shawlette. They look very similar, and I like both… but in the end, I chose Multnomah.

So far, I’m having lots of fun watching the colors change and knitting the garter stitch portion.

April 19th--
The knitting is going well so far, though I did have to look up a couple of terms (pm = place marker, slm = slip marker) and remind myself in what direction you wrap the yarn for a yo-- and I’m using a row counter to remind myself whether I’m knitting row 3 or 4-- well, an odd or an even number, since the row counter is actually keeping track of how many rows I’ve done, period. (I can’t tell by just looking at my work whether I’m on a repeat of 3 or 4…)

However, I’m feeling a little concerned that there’s too much pooling-- not of one color, but of two colors. The grey and denim are more concentrated on one side, while the green and ivory are gathering mostly on the other. If it doesn’t look right after a little more knitting, I’ll be tempted to rip it out and restart at a different part of the color repeats, but I don’t know enough about this variegated yarn to know where to restart, so I could just end up with a different version of the same “problem”. I ought to just relax and go with the flow. Pooling is not the end of the world, after all.

May 1st--
Ugh!
I’ve been very slowly working on this between other projects, and I was nearing the end of the garter stitch section. I did a stitch count to make sure of where I was-- and it was off. After doing some mental calculations, I couldn’t figure out where I’d gone wrong-- different counts on either side of the “spine”, and neither of them seeming correct. UGH.

So… I, um, ripped it all out.
Well, this will give me plenty of practice with garter stitch and increasing, I guess. Or maybe I’ll make the Holden pattern instead…

May 11th--
Well, I’m finally back to the end of the garter stitch section! I just knitted the last row of plain garter stitch before the feather and fan set-up (the row with a count of 229 sts) and put in a lifeline as I went.

May 18th--
Slowly but surely making progress. I’ve been enjoying the lace section much more than the garter section, though I have run into a few snags (so far).

First, I dropped a stitch or two in the 4th lace set-up row, couldn’t figure out how to put it back correctly (I think I could, at this point, so yay for learning), and ended up ripping back to the lifeline.

In the next instance I had one too few stitches in (I think) one of the triangles of garter stitch flanking the spine. I don’t know what I did wrong, but to correct it, I simply added in another stitch. (Made one from the row below, I think.) So far, so good, as far as that one goes.

In the other, I think I may have waited a little too long to add in the first set of extra repeats (on the ends of the shawl). I was following someone’s rewrite of the instructions, so I waited until the sixth repeat to think about the extra repeat, whereas it seems that most people add in that repeat in row 3 of the previous repeat. ~sigh~

Well, I think it’ll be ok. There will just be a few extra garter stitches on each side before the feather and fan starts, but whatever. I wasn’t about to risk a major mess-up by trying to rip out just those two or three rows for such a minor mistake-- and when I considered putting in an “after the fact” lifeline, I was afraid I wouldn’t get that right, either. So extra garter stitch it is!

Honestly, I don’t think it will be obvious. For all anyone else knows, that’s how it’s meant to look!

May 25th--
Well. I found a mistake several rows back. I don’t know what I did, but somehow I twisted together a few of the strands to one side of the spine-- the part created by the yarn overs. I ripped it back to that part but still couldn’t figure out how to fix it… so I ripped back to the lifeline (before the lace set-up rows). ~SIGH~

I’m definitely getting a lot of practice out of this project.

Now I’m trying to decide whether to add more rows of garter stitch before starting the lace… Not sure…

May 30th--
Decided to keep the garter stitch the same. Caught up and passed the point where I was before I spotted that last mistake. Put in another lifeline in the 4th row of a repeat (don’t remember which one). It’s going smoothly, now, so far as I can tell, but I’m having trouble maintaining interest. I really want this thing done, but my hands are getting tired of knitting it. (g)

October 9th, 2013--
Let this be a lesson to me for future projects: Do not set aside a WIP “for a few days”-- especially if you’re doing so because you can’t decide how to proceed-- unless you are willing to risk having it go into deep hibernation.

I finally picked this thing back up again, yesterday, well over a year since the last time I worked on it, and I am determined to finish it today. (I’m using Jenny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off.)

I don’t know what it is about this pattern, but I think it’s cursed (for me, at least). Still, I think I can at least get it off the needles soon. I don’t know if I’ll ever wear the thing, though… It’s smaller than I’d envisioned. Blocking will make it a little bigger, but next time, I think I’ll make a shawl instead of a shawlette. I’m afraid that a tiny shawl will make me look bigger (chubbier) than I really am, and at the moment, I don’t need any help looking/feeling chubby. (g)