Dec 8th: The pattern is well written and clear, but I think I bit of more than I can chew. The garter panel was easy, but my inexperience with shawl knitting means that I struggle with the lace part. I have a hard time reading my knitting to identify where I have made mistakes, and I keep forgetting to do all the yarns overs. Considering I cast on just two weeks before the deadline of my master thesis also means that I don’t have quite as much available headspace as usual. I am powering through, though, because I think the shawl is beautiful, and I want to improve my lace knitting skills. I am already noticing improvements in my ability to read my knitting (though not, unfortunately, any improvements on the YO front yet).

Dec 26th: I have started to get into the swing of things a bit more. I remember to do almost all the YOs, and I’ve gotten way better at reading my knitting. Something still went wrong somewhere, and I got too many stitches after the garter rows between the lace panels. I ripped back a few rows, so now I have the correct number of stitches, but a smaller garter strip. I suspect the true problem lies further behind, but I am not ripping out any more than I have to.

Jan 11th: I’m ripping out my first attempt at the edging and starting over. I didn’t read the chart well enough and got goofed up. Instead of knitting YO, SSSK on the end of the even numbered rows I knit YO, K1, SSSK, which meant I was decreasing 2 stitches from the body of the shawl and adding an extra stitch to the edging every second row. Hopefully, second time’s the charm.

Jan 26th: I’m finally getting the hang of the edging. Now that I’ve figured it out it’s actually pretty easy. I’m about 1/3 of the way around the edge.

I started with 139 grams of yarn.