So let’s try to get back to a normal routine, after all the recent upheaval. I went off-piste and made a whole other shawl instead of working on this one, but I still think I can finish it in time for my mum’s Christmas present.
My Plan B is to give her the original Wingspan in black and white, which she loved – but these colours are so pretty, and the cotton acrylic blend so much softer and snugglier than 100% cotton, that I really want to have this one done in time. Also isn’t it lovely to be given a thing that was made specially for you?
I have made reasonable progress since I last posted about it, and am well into the first of two full-section repeats, which is followed by a third partial repeat, then the wing tip bind off which was the most bamboozling part of the pattern for me. And the second time I didn’t even follow the pattern (it wasn’t better, and I won’t be freestyling it again).
I have 17 days left to knit, at time of writing – I need to leave at least a full day for blocking and drying, and I will be heading over to my parents’ on 24 December so it needs to be finished and wrapped up that morning. Thankfully, I am fortunate enough to be a person with lots and lots of knitting time available to me. What I should have done was timed the first repeat of the sections so I’d have an idea of timescale – though of course as the shawl gets wider, the rows take longer! But it would have been a benchmark of sorts.
It still looks like *so* much yarn. There’s 88g left of 215, so by that measure I’m about 60% done – I do expect it to use the whole skein. I started on 28 October and stopped on 5 November, then picked up again last Wednesday and these photos were taken on Tuesday, so call it another week. If I did 60% of the knitting in two weeks I can definitely finish in another two weeks… right? Does that measurement even make sense? I remain optimistic.
The colour gradient and feather combo is almost as fascinating to me the third time round as the first two. Certainly I’m much, *much* more familiar with the pattern and at this stage am consulting it rather than following it. I’m really confident on the short rows and my stitch markers are super helpful in keeping track of how far along they go before turning back.
I wasn’t totally sold on the light blue, if I’m honest… but seeing it in the context of the other colours is convincing me. This colourway is called Blackcurrant Squeeze Me. It’s not quite as beautiful to work with as the Liquorice colourway was – there’s more fuzziness around the knots, which I would describe as felting if it wasn’t a cotton acrylic blend. And it’s a tiny bit more tangly. But nowhere near the horror that was Cotton Kings on my first attempt!
As previously noted, I had some trouble with the linen stitch seciton in the middle which I’m trusting to the power of blocking to disguise somewhat. I kept thinking I had got back on track then realising that, once again, I was slipping the wrong stitches. So it’s a bit higgledy piggledy but it’s only a tiny part of a massive project. I look forward to showing before and after photos of this part in particular.
If this is the first of these posts you’ve read, this is Wingspan (Ravelry link) by VectorKnits (Designer’s site). I’m knitting it in Scheepjes Whirl (Scheepjes website) in Blackcurrant Squeeze Me.
I’ve added this post to the Unraveled Wednesday linkup, with thanks to Kat for hosting.
The Crafty Yarnster 