27-01-2021

About to start the second lace section. 97 grams of yarn remaining.

29-01-2021

About to start the third lace section. 82.7 grams of yarn remaining.

30-01-2021

Because I’m THAT NERD, I made a spreadsheet with the stitch counts for the shawl, to check whether I’m on track to use up most of the yarn. Turns out that at the point where I weighed the yarn yesterday, I had used 45% of the yarn, and had knit just over 50% of the stitches. (6% of the total stitches are in this one short-row section I’m working on now!) So, I’m on a good pace to make good use of my yarn, without having to worry about yarn chicken.

05-02-2021

Before beginning the final lace insert, I had used 66% of the yarn and done 76% of the stitches. It FEELS like I’m going really slowly, now that the rows are so long, but I’m actually knitting way faster than I was at the start, when I was having arm and shoulder troubles that limited my knitting stamina.

I’m wondering about overdyeing the shawl when it’s done. The amount of variance between the light and dark bits in the yarn bothers me, and I think it disrupts the lace in particular. I would never have guessed there were such pale sections from the skein, but I suppose that’s the trouble with giant skeins. I think if I can come up with a nice cobalt colour, it will just tone everything together that bit more and make the stitchwork pop.

09-02-2021

When I finished the last lace section, I had used 74% of the yarn, and done 84% of the stitches, so I will probably work a handful of extra rows. By the end, each row uses about 1% of the total yarn requirement, so it won’t take many rows to use up the extra.

Had a moment of panic last night when I picked up the shawl, and about 30 stitches -- right above the lace insert -- had pulled off the needles and started to ladder down. Thankfully I the worst of the laddering was not in the lace, and I managed to get just about everything back in place. I see one spot where there is, effectively, a slipped stitch now -- but it’s practically invisible and not worth trying to ladder down and back up again to fix. Everything is stable, at least, and there are no loose stitches! Ermahgerd.

13-02-2021

Still had 23.3 grams left after the final garter stitch section as written in the pattern, so I can get another 12 rows (6 ridges) of garter and still have plenty left for the bind-off. Each row is taking about 1.5 grams at this point, with this yarn. It’s definitely a light fingering weight; I considered ending the shawl as written in the pattern, but I know it’s a little smaller because of the finer yarn, and also, I know this yarn would not pair super well with my other, heavier fingering weight scraps for other projects, so I decided to use as much of it as I can here.

14-02-2021

Eeeek. I knew each row was taking 1.5 grams of yarn, so I figured 4 grams for the bind off was plenty. It was not. Maybe 8” before the end I switched to regular (not stretchy) bind-off, and I had to do the last 2” just slipping each stitch over the next, not even knitting — and that left me juuuuuust enough yarn to catch that final loop and weave in the end.