First FO of the New Decade

I finished my Equinox on the Solstice Shawl in 19 days. I found the pattern on Ravelry (and it's free), it had originally been offered as a "mystery shawl" meaning that it was broken up into clues and people knitted it blindly. The first time I saw it I knew I had to knit it, I love the combination of the geometric patterns and the edging was awesome. When I downloaded the pattern I noticed that the edging that I had fallen in love with was indeed a crochet chain bind off, there was only one problem, I don't crochet. At all. So I knit on the shawl and ignored the edging issue, I figure I would deal with it when I got there. I finally got there and I put it down for a few days, did some research, asked around, and found this really helpful tutorial, and decided to jump in. I figured it out and the best part is I didn't even have to fudge the stitch count at the end, it worked out perfectly, I was relived to say the least.

This was different from the other shawls I made because the lace motifs were larger and crossed over from repeat to repeat. Another interesting thing is that most of the increases takes places in the last row of each of the clues, which is something I had never seen. It was a great shawl to knit, the patterned charts only take up three pages of paper and you only knit one element at a time so that was nice. However it is only charted not written out, which is fine with me but I just wanted to warn those that only like the written out patterns. Also the purl rows were a nice break, but on the longer outside rows I wished the purl rows would have knitted themselves. There was a lot of frogging on this project because on clue 3 I misplaced a YO at a very obvious part and I had to frog over 1,750 stitches. It hurt but it had to be done. I figured that this shawl was well over 45,000 stitches and well worth it.

This was also my first (but so not my last) project in Wollmeise Lace in colorway Lavendel. Wollmeise Lace is great because it has over 1,700 yards and it's a bit thicker than regular lace weight yarn. It's great to work with and the stitch definition is wonderful, and the color is stunning. I already have an idea for my next Wollmeise shawl, I can't wait!