05-19-2020

Finished my first skein of gray! I’ve long since taken out my stitch markers but I estimate I have about 200 stitches on the needles (11 full repeats), which is actually where the pattern has you bind off. However, it’s still not wide enough (at the hypotenuse) to have two nice dangly ends when wrapped around the front. Feeling a little pattern fatigue - I guess that’s what I get when I take on a two color brioche project in what is essentially light fingering yarn ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

06-02-2020

I ended up with 15 and a half flowers in bind off, which I guesstimate to be 249 stitches. I ended up blocking pretty aggressively, trying to preserve the scale of the flowers but focusing on straightening the spines of the leaves - I found that the br4st dec tended to slant slightly to the left for me. I am surprised that it ended up being so close to a right triangle - it naturally grew horizontally while blocking without stretching the leaves too much. In that way, my finished shawl didn’t match the schematic shown on page 2 - my “wingspan” ended up quite a bit longer, which allowed me to form the right triangle. In fact, it ended up being so long that I needed to extend my blocking mats! (see: the Wheat Thins box the corner is pinned to.)

Finished dimensions:

Scalloped (bind off) edge: 106 cm/42 in

Perpendicular (spine) edge: 105 cm/41.75 in

Hypotenuse (“wingspan”) edge: 146 cm/57.25 in

I ended up placing a lot of lifelines, but didn’t end up using them - I was able to save a dropped stitch and a wacky br4st inc in my stubbornness without ripping back.

I didn’t swatch but I’m happy with my choice of needles and the resulting scale of the pattern, even though that meant I required more repeats to achieve the same size.

This project was a great introduction to brioche, and by the end I could read my knitting and repeat the pattern by sight. I really am quite happy with this project and the finished product.