1st Shawl, 2014

3/3: In 2012, I was able to select from Donna’s vast spectrum of yarns, two skeins of her wonderful, hand-dyed yarn because I sample knitted a shawl for her. Of my choices, she had a very small batch of what she called “Surprise” fingering yarn because she was experimenting and couldn’t remember how to re-create this hand-dyed yarn, hence the name “Surprise,” again after the creating this sole batch. I felt this was the yarn I had to get because of the uniqueness.

It took me a while to pick the appropriate pattern to showcase Donna’s yarn. Last year, Kristi was generous to be giving out a choice of one of gorgeous patterns for free and I was drawn by the name “Spring is in the Air.”

I wanted to knit during the Olympics last month and join the Ravellenic Games like I did for the Summer Olympics in 2012 and also be able to wear it for Stitches West that was going on at the same time. The day I was going to SW was the last day of the Olympics.

Donna’s yarn and Kristi’s pattern was a match in heaven, I knitted Chart I -- 11 repeats (291), until I got to Chart II, Row 3 --- stitch K3into2. I am a visual learner so I tried looking for YouTube videos and couldn’t find any. I tried reading the sts description but I ended up knitting it wrong. So there was a very long night of frogging!

I found Volntr’s notes to be very helpful and it finally clicked. But then when I got to Chart III, somewhere along the way I missed a stitch which then translated by the time I got to Row 13, I was totally off and the top half of the diamond looked lopsided compared to the bottom half. So there were a couple of days of frogging which I missed finishing this during the closing games and couldn’t wear this to SW!

I wasn’t going to let this defeat me because I was the one who missed that one stitch. I started knitting this again last Wednesday night, 2/26, and took my time, used stitch makers at the 12 stitch pattern repeats and counted and then re-counted again each row before I started the next. I made no further mistakes and knitted all the way down to Chart V Edging and knitted R1-4 before I started binding off at stitch 353, using US10 needle and followed Kristi’s bind off instructions.

This took me about 1 1/2 hr while watching the Oscars last night. Part of me wanted to continue and try to knit rows 5 - 6, but luckily I wasn’t that crazy because I had very little yarn left.

I used a US5 needle instead of 6 because Donna’s fingering is on the lighter side and I didn’t like the looseness. So it made sense to go down a needle size for the bind off. Definitely, you need to use a much larger needle size to make the tips. I didn’t use beads because I am not a bead person and don’t have any interest in learning to knit with beads, not that there isn’t anything wrong with that. ; )

Unblocked: 60 in x 16 in
Blocked: 64 in x 21 in, So I knitted a Large, but because of going down a needle size it became a Medium.

So would I knit this again? Would I recommend this pattern? Surprisingly, yes and yes. It’s a relative simple pattern and once you figure out how to K3into2 it’s relatively easy. Just need to give yourself more time than you think because you will be counting and re-counting the stitches and the use of more than 2 dozen stitch markers. It wet blocks beautifully.

To read more, please visit my blog Knitted Candy.