Shawls

How can it be October already?

This month we can expect snow and ice, sometimes the lake freezes in October, and the winter will soon surround us. By the end of the month, there is so little daylight left that I will hang up my seasonal lights. It is not bad, but this time October came sooner than never before. I am looking forward to settling in and down during the winter months, I hope to get lots of knitting and crochet done and hopefully some quilting as well. It has been warm and wet for the past few days, but now that I look out of the window, I can see wind is picking up and its direction is also shifting. I wonder if it will be from the icy north later today. Fall is the time for reindeer herds too; I keep seeing them almost daily. (Sorry for the blurry, zoomed with a phone pictures...)

There is one thing in my daily routines that I really don’t like during the winter and it is walking on snow and ice. The snow starts to pile up and there will be layer upon layer and even though the walkways are mostly cleaned well after every snow fall, after a while there is a coating and your feet will not touch hard ground but this layer of soft breaking snow, or it is slippery going on ice. I love walking and will do it every day, but instead of lovely, easy stroll, it becomes bit of a struggle.  

Last time we spoke, I showed you the beginnings of Stephen West shawl, the Exploration Station. It has been around for a long time and many have knitted it so far, but me just this fall. I think my first ever Stephen West shawl was last fall, the Texture Time Mystery KAL and the process was so interesting and fun that it kindled my love of knitting again, that and the Ziggurat-sweater method by Åsa Tricosa.

Since the Texture Time, I have done The Doodler and Speckle and Pop. I cast on for Doodler in the spring thinking that it would be a quick knit. It was not. It became a huge shawl, I used odd balls with mohair from the stash, spent hours knitting it but in the end, I was very happy with the outcome. It is soft and big and sweet.

Oh, I did knit Esjan in the spring as well.

I wanted to cast on for Speckle and Pop right after the Doodler, but it took some time to get the color theme worked out. I knew that my main provider of yarn would be the well curated stash again and after knitting socks for such a long time, I had many little bits of blue yarn in the bins and I dug them all out, and decided to mix and match those, sparkled up by some reds and oranges. I went through the first section quite quickly but then I started to have serious doubts.

After the little red triangles were done, I was very unhappy and almost ripped the whole thing. The shawl was big and thus so bunched on the needle that it was impossible to see the whole piece. It was in time out for maybe a month, maybe even more before I picked it up again and decided to finish it. When the last stitch was done and bound off, I still was not sure at all. The crumpled piece of knitting did not look promising at all.

But when it was all pinned out and blocking, I did see it in totally different light. I do like it, I love the color play of the blues and teals, it is not too bright nor too quiet, somehow it is just right. I really, really like it. I have not yet taken the last pictures of it, but I will do it at some point, and you will see it in all its glory.

Esjan was a quick knit with 8mm needles and again such a fun knit with the huge yarnover holes.

And now there is Exploration Station… I am currently knitting the final part, the chevrons and after that there is the long I-cord cast off. Again, yarn from the stash. One of the things I love about Stephen’s shawls is the possibility to use odd balls of yarn. Even though I seem to agonize over my yarn choices a lot, I still love how there is so much playroom.

This time I know I made one bad choice. It is this part. I should have calmed down my color palette at this point and then could have gone back to the original colors but instead I used the same loud skein for these two parts, and I don’t like that part at all. I am trying to bring it down with this last bit and am knitting these chevrons with beautiful Julie Asselin Leizu Fingering Simple in color Biscotti.

But, after every row, I put the shawl down and think for a while whether I should rip this part. Then decide not to, because it will be bunched up around the neck and will never again be looked at as a whole piece. Then the other me is saying that there is no sense in knitting something you have doubts, because it is knitting and after this is done, there will be just more knitting, so why not knit something I am happy with. Then the third me is pointing out, that once in a while you make mistakes, and just learn to live with them and learn from them, will do me good to be placed in a humble position and do better the next time, as there is always the next time. The fourth me is pointing out that the new MKAL begins Friday and my mind should be clean to tackle that project and the creative side of the brain should not be weight down with the unfinished shawl…

So I am not sure. Do I rip back, take part in the MKAL in between, and then return to this shawl? It is quite scary to end up knitting something this big and be unhappy with it. It will take its toll on my knitting… what if I will never again want to pick up my needles after I see this, what if my knitting mojo walks away with the unhappy ending…  maybe after this is all done and blocked, I will like it in the end. Maybe it will be good enough. Maybe I can live with a loud shawl. (The color is not the only concern, I did make the shawl bigger by adding two wedges, and I did it willy-nilly… what if it does not lay flat?)

Wool with you,

Lene