FO Post (Finally!)

Hello all!  I hope you had a good weekend.  Mine was great, particularly Saturday, when I spent the day with Dee. We had a wonderful time, walking around in Philadelphia, having some lunch, and checking out what was new at Loop.  Then her husband Steve drove into town to join us, and along with The Tim we went out for a really nice dinner, and then back home for a bit before they had to head back to the hotel to see Giroux and pack, since they were leaving to go home yesterday.  It was so nice to have a knitterly, kitty-loving, funny friend to hang out with and laugh.  

Yesterday was a day of catching up with laundry, bills, and that kind of thing.  Also a nice day, just not as busy as Saturday.  :-)

In any event, I can *finally* share my Finished Object post for my Scattered Wishes shawl that I finished knitting and then blocked about a month ago!  I wanted some nice pictures of the finished item not just blocking but looking like a shawl!  The Tim was kind enough to take a few, but they were all too blurry.  So I'd been trying to think of how/where to get some other photos.

Then on Saturday morning, before I left the house, I decided if we were going to stop at Loop, I at least wanted to take the finished shawl to show them, since I'd purchased the yarn there.  Laura, who works there, wanted to take some shots to put on their Facebook page, so I was able to get some really nice photos of the shawl there, and they are at the end of the post.

So here goes.

Project:  Scattered Wishes (Ravelry page link)

Pattern:  Sonora, by Kirsten Kapur

Yarn:  Hedgehog Fibres Sock; Construct (grayish) and Wish (teal)

Needles:  US 7

Modifications:  None (at least not on purpose!)

Notes:  Below after some of the photos

This is the lace border as it is supposed to look, and how it does look for most of the top part.  It was the last part knitted, and threw me for a loop, as lace is not a particular skill of mine.  At certain points, I just fudged things, because I didn't know what I had/had not done to cause problems.  

Fortunately, the fudging kinda sorta worked just fine.  I was both surprised and happy about the result!

The bands of color are created by regular garter stitch for the borders, and slip stitch for the "colorwork."

This is a great pattern, and it is also really fun to knit.  I would definitely make another one, and I would love sometime to try the yarn that the pattern uses.  It has a more lofty appearance than the Hedgehog Fibres, and so I think the end result would look somewhat different.

I can tell you that Kirsten Kapur, the designer, is very responsive to questions sent to her on Ravelry.  When I was getting started, I just couldn't quite "get" the pattern, and wrote to her a couple of times.  She responded really quickly and very thoroughly.  She may have been at her computer rolling her eyes and tearing her hair out at my questions, but I never got that sense when reading what she had written.

Here are the photos I took at Loop.  (Dee has seen these ad nauseum, and I have posted them on Facebook, so apologies if you are seeing these for the umpteenth time!)

This is the back of the shawl.

And here is the front view, which is just especially pleasing to me.

I cannot recommend this pattern highly enough.  It's all garter stitch, and the slip stitch bands are interspersed well enough to keep it from being just a plain old boring knit.  Only in the slip stitch bands are you using two colors, and once you get the hang of it, you're not really even "knitting" with both in a row.  Even I was able to read my knitting once I got things going, and that's saying something!

I'm really happy with how this turned out.  It's probably one of the most elaborate things I've ever knit, and I surprised myself (in a good way, of course). 

I'll be back soon with another FO post about another knit that took me a truly ridiculous amount of time, all of it due to me and my inability to focus.  In the meantime, I hope your week goes well!