I reserved some Polwarth in Thin Line Between Love and Batteries for this. The polwarth just FEELS right for this pattern!

I made a swatch, but I started knitting before blocking it. I know I have plenty of yarn, so that won’t be an issue, it’s mostly just out of curiosity to see if the shawl will end up larger or smaller than the pattern calls for. The fabric looked good, so I just forged ahead.

I bought 2 colors of beads because I couldn’t decide whether I wanted dark or light beads, so I’ll just do a few of each on the beading row and see how they turn out. I may need to solicite opinions on the forums.

The blocked swatch is 20 sts = 4 inches, so it should be slightly larger than the schematic.

I made the triangle version of the shawl.

Row 1 of the Braids and Beads section was easier to do while knitting English style, but the rest was knitted Continental.

I had one panic moment when I got to an eyelet row and the count was off and upon examination found that I had screwed up in the previous eyelet row. It appeared that instead of knitting 2 and then passing the next stitch over, I had dropped a stitch and then knit 2 together. I really didn’t want to tink back 6 rows so I attempted surgery. I dropped the 3 stitches involved, corrected the weird stitch mistake, then wove the 3 stitches all the way back up. I had to do it twice because I got the stitch slant wrong the first time (and I’m not totally convinced I got it right the second time, but at least it blends better) and it was a tight fit since I knitted the next 6 rows missing a stitch, but I fixed it!

Off the needles it seems a little smaller than I had imagined. Hopefully it will grow with blocking? Man, I wish I had remembered to measure the swatch before I blocked it.

Blogged about it here.