I have been knitting a newly-designed shawl for almost a year now. It languished over the winter, but I recently picked it back up again and have started knitting on it some more. It’s in 3 parts– middle, border, and edging. I knitted the border last week, and have moved onto the edging. It’s a knitted-on edging, which means, at least at the beginning, you start out with about 12 stitches on your needle, and try to attach it to the edge of the border. It’s fiddly and trying. And I managed to do it not once, but four times yesterday– twice were swatches with a contrasting yarn, to test the pattern and make sure I liked it. The third and fourth were with the real deal. Once I had 1 repeat done, knitting on the rest has been relatively easy. I say this, of course, because I haven’t dropped any stitches yet nor had my entire edging fall off as a result.
It’s also beaded. Did I mention that? Not heavily– just a little line of beads along the very edge to give it some weight and force the scallopy edging to do something neat once it’s all blocked. But yes. I do like it very much.
This shawl, incidentally, is destined to be given to someone who was a big help to my family last year (and who is in my family, I’m happy to say). The design/pattern has a future as my first mystery lace knit-along. That’s where you sign up and get each clue sent to you over the course of several weeks (I’ve done these before; they are fun), and you knit along in a big group of people also tackling the same project.
Designing and knitting this shawl has given me ideas for no less than 2 other shawls, which I’m going to work on sometime in the next few months, and both of which would be highly fun and amusing.