Thinking about making a Glittering Snowscape? Do it! This has been a low-key super fun knit to work on!

GENERAL NOTES

May 2024 update: My mother died recently so life including this wip’s progress came to a screeching halt. Some day I will update the rest of the notes related to this pattern, but I just don’t have the capacity for it right now. I did eventually finish the knitting, but everything was paused for awhile.

Updates regarding the border:

Update 1/29/24 - The project is all knit up except for the border section, which I’m planning on knitting with beads. The beads are on backorder from my favorite bead/yarn supply store so I am placing this project in hibernation pending their receipt.

Update 2/23/24 - The beads did arrive and I tried out a few different placement locations for them and ultimately decided….they just weren’t quite right for this project after all. I was really looking forward to adding them to the project, but the location I wanted to place them doesn’t really work as well as I had hoped. The beads will get used for something else! Now I am finishing the project, beadless. Oh well…

Why didn’t I follow the instructions for the gradient color scheme?

Many years ago I started collecting blue skeins of yarn to make into some sort of amazingly majestic shawl project some day. TML is gorgeous yarn but isn’t the most budget-friendly and that’s the only way I could have afforded to knit something like this especially back when I started slowly collecting this yarn. As it turns out, I didn’t end up using all of the different colors I collected (about half leaned grey and some leaned green and I had some leftovers from a more recent project, and anyway with it all mixed together, it wouldn’t have been harmonious enough), but that’s fine, I’ll just do another similar project leaning blue-grey some day.

Gradients are awesome, but since I wanted to knit from stash, it wasn’t in the cards this time.

These project notes are really long, why?

Since I’ve completely changed things with my yarn choice, and since I’m one who enjoys data, I kept track of weights and other things to help me better understand yardage consumed.

I’ve also been interested in calculating with reasonable accuracy the exact length of time it takes for me to knit “things” and so I’ve been tracking data related to stitch counts and row counts and length of time it takes for me to knit rows, etc. At the moment most of that data is scrawled on notes stuck next to my computer monitor rather than typed into here (lucky you or this would be even longer).

Since I’m just working towards accumulating data, it’s all useful at the moment. That just means slogging through it all if you want to read all the details.

Needle Size

I tend to knit Tighter Than Everyone Else so I always go up a needle size or two. This is the size of needle that tends to work best for me with this yarn/pattern type combination, so I went with it. Unless you also knit tightly (or especially loosely, or if you’re drastically changing your yarn choice), you’re probably going to want to use something closer to the suggested needle size.

The Cast-On

Having knit a few of Stephen’s i-cord edged shawls, by now I’ve developed my favorite way of casting on: I use JMCO to cast on 3/3 stitches and use the stitches on one needle to knit the first “row”s, and the other three stitches in place of the three “picked up” stitches which is directed in the first “Next Row.“

Is my way easier or better? I’m not sure, but it works for me…

SECTION-SPECIFIC NOTES AND NOTES ON YARN USED
Colors listed from center out:

Start of the shawl through the end of Section 2 (the center portion of the shawl): a blue one-of-a-kind skein. A very nominal amount was used, scraps from a previous project that were so small I almost didn’t even bother to save them.

I’m debating on cutting this section out and reknitting it in a different color and grafting that into the shawl. Haven't made up my mind yet… …Update, now that everything else except the border is knit: I have decided that this section is a little too greyish-blue, and beautiful though it is, it doesn’t quite match. I will cut this section out and graft in a new section knit up in Button Jar Blue. But, due to the recent death in my family, I’m not sure when I will get around to doing this.

Gold and blue stripes throughout: Nocturne and Glazed Pecan. (See weights listed below.) Both of these colorways have copper stellina in them!!

All Ridge sections were knit using the same color distribution as prescribed in Section 9, producing two thick gold stripes separated by two rows worked of a thin navy blue stripe. The weights below account for both colors of yarns combined.

• Section 3 - 2.4 grams used of gold, 0.6 grams used of navy (3 grams total)
• Section 5 - 4.8 grams used of gold, 1.2 grams used of navy (6 grams total)
• Section 7 - 6.4 grams used of gold, 1.6 grams used of navy (8 grams total)
• Section 9 - 8.8 grams used of gold, 2.2 grams used of navy (11 grams total)
• Section 11 - 9.6 grams used of gold, 2.4 grams used of navy (12 grams total)
• Section 13 - 10.4 grams used of gold, 2.6 grams used of navy (13 grams total)
• Section 15 - 15.2 grams used of gold, 3.8 grams used of navy (19 grams total)
• Section 17 - 16.8 grams used of gold, 4.2 grams used of navy (21 grams total)

Total of the above yarn used for all ridge sections combined: 74.4 grams used of gold, 18.6 grams used of navy, (93 grams total).

Note that these same two colorways will be used to knit the border section and the weights used there will be listed at the end of these notes below.

Section 4 - dark teal green granite lace: Misfortune, 10 grams used. I tried using scraps but had the …misfortune… of losing at yarn chicken (I did not have enough). (I’ll see myself out. Lol.)

To resolve my problem, I purchased the same colorway from a yarn destash but it was dyed several years ago likely just prior to the company sale and is markedly different from my relatively recently dyed yarn. I frogged what I had and reknit this section with the older yarn. I’m happy, I like the older yarn a little better anyway, the colors overall are a more saturated and that’s my jam.

Section 6 - textured light green waffle stitch: Lost in Trees (Solid), 10 grams used. A few of the MT colorways have “solid” versions which aren’t actually “solids” in the typical definition of the word, this colorway just doesn’t have visible speckles. I debated on even including this due to the brown content but decided it fit enough with the gold stripes. A good call, it looks good and this was left over from another project so I was happy to utilize scraps here!

Section 8 - teal arrowhead lace: Nassau Blue, 21 grams used. This arrowhead lace gave a lot of knit-along participants trouble. My recommendation is to be extra careful to get the first row or two correct and then from that point forward “read your knitting” (look at what you’re knitting and how that compares to what you’ve already knit) and if the stitches you are forming aren’t stacking up nicely, something is probably wrong. Many knitters liked using stitch markers to mark the repeats, so that may be a strategy for you too.

Section 10 - green/blue variegated “pillars”: Newshire, 24 grams used. This is one of my all-time favorite MT colorways, period.

This section actually calls for two-color stripes, but after trying it out and frogging it because what I had planned to use was too high-contrast, I decided this section was perfect for this variegated yarn. I did alternate skeins but just used one colorway for both skeins.

Some knitters felt the kitted suggested colors in the original gradients were not contrasty enough for this section and expressed the feeling that perhaps they should have knit it up in different colors…. but having knit this section partway up with high-contrasting colors, I can advise that you should “trust Stephen” and go with low-contrast stripes or a low-contrast variegated yarn like this. The lower contrast color change does look better in my opinion.

Section 12 - navy mesh: Deep, 23 grams used. This colorway is one of the original colorways I bought for this blue project a long time ago. It’s been sitting in my stash waiting for the right project to come along. This yarn is OG TML and knitting with it makes me miss how it was back then. I shall covet my remainders and use them for something else beautiful because although the new stuff is great and absolutely is a favorite of mine, the old stuff was golden.

Now that I’ve waxed poetic on old TML, here are some tips for knitters making the shawl: This section is easy to inadvertently knit up loosely (which looks a little messy) if you’re not diligent about making your knitting needles do the work for you. Be sure to work on the needle barrels, not the tips, and make sure you’re maintaining gentle-but-always-present tension on your working yarn so the stitches stay true to the size of the needle diameter, especially when you’re forming the decrease stitches.

Section 14 - two-color slip stitch columns: Glass Bottom Boat (15 grams used) and Fathom (16 grams used). I knit the last two rows in this section in an identical manner as the first two (mostly just stockinette), so as to avoid the contrast color slipped stitch sticking up at the end. In the shawl colors suggested by Stephen, this likely looks great because the color would normally “connect” visually to the next set of ridge stripes, but since my stripes are gold and not the suggested colors, it would have looked odd.

Section 16 - second granite lace section: Blue Nile, 34 grams used. Some other knitters substituted other textured stitches for this section since it was a repeat, but a few reported gauge issues and fabric puckering as a result, so I decided to not tempt fate and left it as is.

Section 18 - navy border with gold stripes: Nocturne and Glazed Pecan. This section isn’t yet knit as of this writing, but I’ll update it with information later. Update - it’s knit up, but I just haven’t had the capacity to write out notes for it. Some day…