PATTERN:

The Oana shawl from the Winter 2011 Knitscene. It’s a large-scale, worsted-weight, fringed lace scarf. (and yes, that was a mouthful.) Knit from the point up, the lace repeat is simple and not frilly in the least-- the latter being a huge plus in my book.

The pattern is very easy to read from the shawl as you knit, which can be handy if you find your stitch count off at the end of a row. On the down side, given that as you get towards the end of the scarf, some of those rows can be over 150 stitches long, it’s not terribly fun to have to frog back to find where you made your mistake. Sometimes twice.

There’s a large diamond garter stitch border, which prevents the main body of the scarf from curling. The garter border along the top edge is less successful; I think that six rows weren’t really enough to fight all that stockinette. If I weren’t worried about running out of yarn, I’d’ve knit an additional 6-10 rows for a sturdier finish.

In spite of the size--roughly 450 yards went into the body of the shawl-- I found this to be a quick knit. I think the lace pattern made the row changes interesting, but not frustrating-- good motivation to keep going and see how it develops.

One thing to keep in mind is that there are errata listed for this pattern-- basically, lines 17 and 18 got left out of the publication completely. While the missing information is included in the Rav pattern info, I’d suggest going to Interweave’s site and looking at the corrections there; I found the Rav instructions to be poorly phrased for line 17, which caused some trouble before I realized what was wrong.

Overall, I enjoyed knitting this pattern, and would consider making it again.

PATTERN MODS:
I did one full repeat of the pattern more than called for (10 + 2 lines) in an attempt to use up all the yarn. This may or may not come back to bite me when making the fringe. I obviously also cut more fringe for the additional eyelets.

BLOCKING:
I did a full wet block. The yarn released surprisingly little dye in the wash in spite of the color saturation. A quick drip dry, a date with a towel to press out any extra water, and it was ready to go.

This was my first chance to try out the blocking rods I bought from Knit Picks (photo 6). They are ridiculously effective. It’s normally a pain in the ass to maintain a straight line and block things evenly using pins and waste yarn; using the blocking rods made it far less difficult, if slightly more time-consuming. They’re not fun to seat correctly on something this big; I had to block across my bed because I simply didn’t have the space to do it on the floor, and trying to thread a rod through the edge without dropping the stitches off another one already in place was an exercise in patience-- but I think it was worth the effort.

Because I’m an idiot, I didn’t get pre-blocking measurements, but the lace really opened up with minor encouragement. I probably could have blocked it out even further, but I was almost out of room on the bed as it was. Finished measurements sans fringe are 77” across the top and 24” to the point.

FRINGE: The fringe is attached with a simple lark’s head knot (see photo 5). I’m worried that this might not be sufficient to keep it in place. Unfortunately, my method of cutting the yarn to serve as fringe left me with pieces closer to 6” rather than 8”, so I don’t really have a lot of slack to do a fastening knot on top. If I were to do this again, I’d want to make the fringe longer for just that reason.

YARN:
Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in Fairy Tale. As I said on my stash page, ”Regal purple with blue undertones” my ass, Knit Picks. This is definitely a dark magenta. Like, obnoxiously loud dark magenta. It’s not a bad color, but “regal purple” it ain’t.

This isn’t my first time around the block with Wool of the Andes. As I’ve stated previously, it’s not the softest thing in the world, even compared to, say, Cascade 220, but it’s definitely durable. It doesn’t seem to pill or wear easily, in spite of being left to bounce around freely in my backpack for the past week. (Trust me, that’s not an ordeal many things survive unscathed.)

The color wasn’t what I was expecting-- a semi-regular problem with KP-- but I’m hoping the color sampler I’m getting from the KP Lovers group here on Ravelry will help me sort that issue out for future purchases.

I’m not thrilled with Knit Picks’ recent price increases, but I’ll probably still choose WOTA when I need a nice workhorse yarn with a wide color selection (in everything other than orange and yellow, another point of contention for me :P).

NEEDLES:

6.5 mm 29” circs. (The same set I used to make my bed squid.) It was a tight squeeze, but I managed to fit the entire thing on one set of needles.

OTHER:

• The color is probably truest in the fourth picture. This color is incredibly difficult to capture accurately, in case you can’t tell from the value range across the photos. :P

• This is shawl #1 for the 12 Shawls in 2012 knit-a-long.

1/11: Finished knitting the shawl on the train from Buffalo to Penn Station. Was left at a loss for what to do for the rest of the trip, as cutting 460 pieces of yarn on the train to NJ was probably not the best idea.

1/20: Finished attaching the fringe. It took considerably less time than I was expecting-- managed to get it done in 2 nights. Now the only thing left to do is get pictures.

Yarn Changes:
4 skeins of yarn used for the body.
Sk. 1: cast on.
Sk. 2: Repeat 5, row 2.
Sk. 3: Repeat 8, row 2.
Sk. 4: Repeat 10, row 4.
Sk. 5: Fringe! Just barely had enough for all the lengths I needed.

Knitting the body of the shawl: 65/65%
Blocking the Shawl: 10/10%
Fringe: 15/15%
Writing the Rav project page: 5/5%
Taking photos: 5/5%