10-08-2022

OK, due to too many good things happening (all postponed from 2019 and COVID delays) into short a time frame, this took a long time to complete and a couple other things were made in between start and finish. I took it on a cruise and made good headway there, but by the end of the “blue-plus” yarn from Island Girl yarn used in the middle tier, it was taking an hour for each row! Ended up with 738 stitches on the needle at the hem!

I wanted a lighter weight shawl so opted to use fingering yarn I had (and ended up buying four more skeins, some of which are STILL leftovers), with the idea I would make it longer than the pattern. I did that. Well.

What I ended up with is a lovely shawl (not totally in love with it, at least not yet) that is a little larger, and weighs 488 grams. If I had simply used the yarn suggested it would have weighed about 500 grams or a little less AND taken about a billion fewer stitches and way fewer hours. Lesson learned.

Wingspan on mine is about 75” (compared to 60” on pattern) and 28” deep (vs. 21” on pattern). EYE ROLL. Banging my head against wall. Yep, a few thousand extra hours for a few extra inches. Which, to be honest, I don’t really need.

However, if you want to do something this insane, here’s what I did:

Used hints from jacky-m ‘s version and from @kkeaveny -- try searching those names in the finished projects.

Did first part per the pattern
Did the second part per the pattern
Repeated rows 83-102 three times more
returned to row 81 and improvised…

In Stephen’s pattern you end up with 16 contrast color stitches in between the trellis crossovers/slipped stitches

I increased another round and followed the basic process. Did I think another full diamond or two at which point I said enough is enough.

Yarn hints: The white/aqua (first tier), green and red-violet were from a kit for a Knit Stars workshop that I decided I didn’t really like the pattern. I bought more of the yarn to make this. I went into the third skein of the green, used less than one skein for the light aqua, and almost the entire skein of the blue for the middle tier, which is the Island Girl Yarn, and a full skein of the red-violet.

I had seen that Mermaid Tail yarn for the middle tier in a local shop but in a heavier weight, so ordered it in fingering because it had some white in it as well as colors that transition from the light aqua to the red violet. As happens with hand-dyes, though, the skein I received had zero white. That meant it didn’t transition quite as well as I had hoped--with white in it, it would have repeated and carried the light of the first tier down and visually tied the three tiers together better.

The pattern calls for a knit-off hem where you pick up a pearl bump and knit it together with the live stitch on the left needle to bind off. For me that was unbelievably awkward. It took an hour to bind off about 14” of hem. NOT. So, since I was at my son’s house for the weekend and didn’t have circulars, I used a DPN and picked up as many purl bumps as I could fit on the needle and effectively did a 3-needle bind-off. Way, way, WAY easier. If I had had my circulars, would have used one maybe two to three sizes smaller than the working needles to pick up the bumps and picked up ALL of the purl-bumps at once. Once I started with the DPN it went SO much faster and easier. Another lesson learned.

After all that knitting though there is no way I’d ever rip it out and do over. In my lap I’m still not thrilled, but wearing it I think it looks better. Still not the ideal gradation, but it works. Mostly. And I WILL wear it!