An 18-month Shawl

I knew this shawl had been hanging arounf for a while, but I did not realize I had started it in February 2019. That means it took me almost 18 months, ignoring the fact that it apparently took three attempts to get started, from start to finish.

Not that I worked on it consistently, of course. I was focusing on it for a while, especially when it was small and a row took under 10 minutes.

Once I ran out of the pink, which was some hand-dyed Knit Picks Shadow Bare that I had dyed with drink powder, and moved on to the white, the rows started taking longer and I started getting bored more easily. It started getting set aside for longer intervals, though it did get dragged along to sports practices.

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Growing ever so slowly. #knitting

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Once I ran out of white and hit the blue, the rows were taking at least 30 minutes each. Not to mention the sheer amount of markers I needed and how paperclips get tangled into stitches so often.

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Adding in color number 3 in the shawl. #knitting

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Still, I kept dragging it along whenever we went out, because that is how I could force myself to work on it without getting distracted by other things I’d rather be doing.

But sometimes I would be able to focus at home while doing other projects that didn’t require my full focus.

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Projects on projects today. #knitting #stickers

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It eventually got to the point where each row was taking an hour, so I tried to fit in partial rows whenever I could.

Don’t even ask how long the picot edge binding off took. It was spread over days, possibly even weeks. I honestly can’t remember at this point because it took so long. But it is finished, it is giant, and it is up in my Etsy shop.

I had originally intended to write up the pattern for this, but I don’t think anyone really wants to make a shawl this big that takes this long. Maybe I will revisit it and make some adjustments to reduce the size and write it up smaller.

A pink and white shawl propped up on various items in a large spiral, showing off the immense size.

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Slow and Steady

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Growing ever so slowly. #knitting

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I’ve been working on this shawl for many months now. It’s a semicircle, which means it has to double the number of stitches every once in a while.

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Adding in color number 3 in the shawl. #knitting

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At the end of the last doubling, it increased the time it takes to complete each row to about an hour. So this is taking much longer than anticipated.

Case in point, I took the oldest boy to jump at a trampoline park for two hours this morning, and got exactly two rows finished. But at least I’m using up some really small yarn.


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Shrug It Off

It seems like it’s been a while since I’ve knit something beginning to end. I have a lot of projects lying around in various stages of finishing. There’s a mostly done baby blanket, three mittens waiting to be embroidered at Christmas time (there were four, but one got lost and needs to be remade), and the rest of the mittens that only have ribbing started. But I haven’t sat down and finished anything in a while. Mostly because it either doesn’t need to be done for a long time, or has no deadline at all.

This shrug/cape/shawl thing does have a deadline, however. My mom needed it done for her gala at work on April 30. She decided she needed a new one around March 20, so, with shipping time for the yarn from Knit Picks, I had a bit of a time crunch on my hands. Luckily, she picked the Gloss Lace yarn which is a blend of wool and silk and therefore could be spit spliced together. Which means I only had to weave two ends, the beginning and the end.

I made up for having only two ends to weave by dropping a stitch about twenty rows from the end and only realizing it when I was on the last row. So I dropped a couple around it to give myself yarn to fix it and did a lot of this:

It worked out fine, so I was able to finish in just over a week. Now it just needs a bath and a dry before I give it to her this weekend and take a final finished picture. Which you will be able to see Sunday on my Instagram or a few days after on my Tumblr.

You can find the details on Ravelry here. The pattern is Fairy’s Shrug (Drops 119-17).