I was happy with my gauge swatch after washing – the stitch gauge was a little large, but the row gauge was small, so I figure it’s about the same amount of yarn being used and over time the weight of the finished shawl may stretch the row gauge. Anyway, it looked nice and going smaller wasn’t going to improve things.
I will admit, at 35 pages, the pattern is intimidating. But it’s also very thorough with written and charted instructions as well as an overview. I expect it to get more difficult, but the first few parts are pretty simple once you get going, so I think this will help me be better prepared to read and understand the more complex parts which come later.
I was particularly excited yesterday to start the syncopated brioche – doing a brk where it would normally be a brp and vice versa, ie: knit instead of purl for those who haven’t tried brioche – which makes the orange pop against the blue. This means I have officially started the “fireworks” part of the shawl.
Now I am off to squeeze in a few minutes of knitting before thenwork day starts. At the moment, this shawl is the only knitting I want to work on.