It’s my birthday and I’ll knit what I want to, knit what I want to, knit what I want to! ^^

Okay, so not quite my birthday. But I’ll still knit what I want to! ^^ And this pattern looks totally gorgeous, I kinda sorta wish I wasn’t going to be driving all day tomorrow so I could start on it right now. And, while I’m wishing for things, that I didn’t get carsick at the drop of a hat so I could knit all day tomorrow, too. xx Alas, it is not to be! But I plan to start tomorrow any, just … at night, after I get into Victoria. Or while on the ferry! ^^ Yes. Yes, this shall be the plan.

Eeeee, this will be so pretty! ^^

As of Aug 3/15, I’m one row away from finishing 4 of 7 sections, some I’m totally ticking off the 50% completed thingy, yay! ^^ As you can see, my kitty is modelling it for me. Or, you know, not running away while I take (waaaay too many) picutres, whatevs!

As of Aug 20/15, I am about a third of the way through the last repeat, after which is only the edging, yay! :)

As of Aug 23/15, I have finished the last repeats before the edging starts, yay! :D

As of Sept 4/15, I am on row 19 of the edging and.so close to being finished, I can almost taste it! It tastes like a perfect cup of coffee, people! And the casting off has finished, yes!

Cost Calculations
This is a thing I like doing (mostly to convince people to not ask me to knit them something) and I’ve decided to start keeping track of it. Note that I am not selling this piece--it is merely to illustrate what I would be thinking of if, say, I actually did any knitting on commission. All amounts are in Canadian dollars.

Yarn cost: 2.86 CAD per ball
4.3 balls used
Total yarn cost 12.30
Pattern cost: 5.18 CAD (at time of purchase)
Labour: yards x $0.10
Total labour: 78.26
Total cost to knit shawl: 95.14

Notes for Me:

• most of these notes relate to the charts, as I would rather knit from charts and not from written instructions. ^^’
• I’m doing a selvedge with that one border stitch, ‘cause I love selvedges, they’re so pretty and smooth and neat. ^^
• to place stitch markers after motif A1, count 26 stitches (including the border stitch) from each side. If you have more than 1 border stitch on each side, then count 25 st + ## border stitches to place markers
• to place stitch markers for the third section (C2/B2/A2/B1/C1), count 25 stitches to the right from the leftmost stitch marker and 25 stitches to the left from the leftmost stitch marker. Do the same for each subsequent repeat of this section of charts.
• right! Because I am dumb and like to do things the hard way, I recharted the charts for my own use and because I don’t deal well with parallel lines (and there are many parallel lines). This, of course, made for much swearing, because did I accurately transcribe all the stitches? That would be no. But! It is done and the charts are now sized a little larger and look a little clearer (to my parallel-lined eyes). And the people I take lunch with rejoice.
• I may have been twisting my purl stitches on the centre panel when I knit back across. It is entirely due to how I deal with the wrong-side row (ie, I hate purling a whole row so I’ve learned how to knit from left to right to avoid it. Go, Team Lazy!), but I am pretty happy with how it’s (accidentally) turned out--like tiny rows of braids in the tree trunk. ^^
• the charts for the edging (and for the main body of the shawl, actually, but it was less annoying with fewer charts, plus I redid those charts for my own use and, in re-doing, reorganised them) are arranged in a non-intuitive way. For example, looking at the suggested placement of the charts (for a 5 repeat shawl), the pattern (were it all one laaaarge chart that magically fit on one page and was not too tiny to see) would read from left to right as chart G2|F2|F2|F2|F2|E2|D|E1|F1|F1|F1|F1|G1. I’ve had to number the charts from 1 to 7 (where 1 is G1 to knit from right to left and 7 is G2 and 4 is D--this would result in the placement looking like 7|6|6|6|6|5|4|3|2|2|2|2|1) because the order they’ve been split into is 4, 3, 5, 2, 6, 1, 7. It was a little confusing to me and, thus, the renumbering of the charts so I knew which one to knit next without having to flip back and forth to the chart placement page. Although there’s a still a bit of flipping to find the next number. ^^’
• stitch markers in the edging charts. For Chart D (the middle), row 1, the 2 yarnovers from charts E1 & E2 should be included as part of Chart D. For Chart D, row 3, move the centred double decrease and the yarnover from E1 & E2 onto Chart D. Also, YMMV, I’m still using the original printout I had and, on review, Chart D on the available download doesn’t look too similar to what I have. As I write this, however (Aug 26/15), these two mods (for stitch markers) still seem to be accurate.
• edging row 15. Save yourself some confusion and follow the written instructions. Hereafter, regard your stitch markers as guides only, otherwise row 19 will mess with your head (the right-slanted double decrease you need to do at the begging of chart F1 requires two sitches from chart G1) and I am too close to the end to spend much brain power on figuring out where to put stitch markers here.