Finished a Shawl, Finally

And it came out great! This shawl is what I was working on before I started making all those baby blankets.

I started on January 15 and was almost finished in February when I sat the project aside. I knew I had to finish it, though, because both yarns were delicious. The tan yarn is baby llama. Baby llama! It’s called
Frog Tree Llambrosia. I used up every bit of that. The second yarn is a hand-painted yarn, whose name is a mouthful: Knitwhits Freia Handpaints Freia Ombré M/S Sport (Refined) – Gradient (the links are to their Ravelry pages). That Freia feels so good to knit with. It’s a silk/wool blend.

As you can see, it’s a simple, triangular shawl, but I did use a pattern to do the tabbed start, so credit goes to that person. The border is based on a classic sawtooth pattern, but I messed around with it. Since I had a lot of Freia left over, I added some plain stitches to make it wider. (Want to learn more? Here it is on Ravelry.)

The big surprise was that when I got to the end of the triangle, I was at the end of a border repeat, which made turning the corner easy. Then, today, when I got to the end, it was EXACTLY at the end of a border repeat! It looks like I did a bunch of careful planning to get the pattern to come out right. I wish I could say I did, but nope, it was total luck.

And no, I don’t have a border pattern. You cast on some stitches, and declare some number your sawtooth and the rest the plain part. You knit some, yarn over, K2 together, then knit to the last stitch which you knit along with a border stitch. Then going back out, you knit 2 together at the end. When there is only one stitch before the hole for the yarn over, cast on some number and start again. I believe my number was 12. You see, I’m a technical writer by day, and it’s the weekend now. No technical writing.

I actually DO have something interesting I want to make after I use up all the Mandala yarn from the baby blankets with my overly colorful crochet ripple afghan. It will be a garment! A sleeveless top! With yarn I have been saving! It’s from the latest Interweave Knits (Summer 2022) and called Morellet. Let’s see if I can do that!

I’m so glad that there are at least a few knitting magazines out there. I can read patterns much better on a page than online. And no way am I sitting through someone yammering on and on for some online pattern. I know I am old, but I don’t have time to sit through endless promotions, background information, videos on how to do a stitch…I just want a pattern.

Don’t get me started trying to find the actual recipe for anything online. I have no sympathy with people’s needs to cram more and more ads in their patterns and recipes. I hope they get rich from it. Wait, don’t I have ads? Yes. And I have yet to hit the magic $100 to get paid.

Heat apparently makes me grumpy. I did drink my healthy supplement o’ magnesium and potassium when I was running around with the horses though, honest. Tarrin made me do it. (That’s her tag line, too.)