I’ve been waiting a lot this winter. Do you know what I mean? At soccer practice, swimming lessons, piano practice. You know. Waiting. It’s not a bad thing. We’ve definitely entered ‘the next stage’ so to speak. I find myself needing to bring along something I can work on without being too involved so that I can carry on a conversation with other parents and not seem too rude. I wish I could use the time to read (ie. listen to an audio book and knit) but that seems too stand-offish. Do you think so? I tried it once and within about 10 minutes I had the headphones off because I felt like I was sending a certain message that I didn’t want to be involved in the conversation happening around me, regardless of whether I wanted to be a part of it or not. I know that sounds negative. I actually don’t mean it to sound that way – it’s just fact. It’s the evening. I’m tired by that time of the day and don’t particularly want to interact! In the end, I settled on bringing along a simple knitting project that ended up taking the entire soccer season to finish so in that sense, it was perfect!

This ‘recipe’ could be adapted to any weight of yarn. For this project, I used about 530 yards of fingering weight yarn spun gently (both singles and ply twist where not overly twisted). The grist of this yarn is 1275YYP (for more on grist, check this post here).

For needles, I used 3.75mm needles but you can work with whatever size you prefer. The thicker your yarn, the larger needle size you will want to choose! The finer your yarn, the finer a needle you’ll want to choose. For drape and lightness, ensure you choose a slightly larger needle that you maybe would otherwise. Stitch counts don’t matter because you are just going to work until you have your desired size before starting your garter border. Remember to leave enough yarn to cast off with at the end! I had 7 yards of yarn left after I finished my shawl but I would have ripped back one row if I’d run out (or found a similar yarn in my stash to cast off with). You can always change to a different yarn for the garter border if you want to maximise your handspun in the first section of the shawl. Really, your imagination is the limit!