Wingspan Progress

Hi everyone!  I hope you are enjoying July.  It is finally summer time here in mid-Cal.  We are having absolutely beautiful days.  In fact, the best days in the year and half I’ve lived here.  Usually it’s overcast and chilly until 2pm-ish and we will get sunshine for 2-4 hours in the afternoon so all this warm sunshine is glorious!

I took a two week vacation in June.  I took my knitting with me thinking the 18 hours of flying EACH WAY would result in almost finishing my Wingspan shawl. I’ve always knitting on planes in the past because, seriously, what the hell else are you going to do on a plane?  On the flight to Thailand, the airline had a lot of movies I wanted to see. While, I usually watch TV or listen to an audiobook while knitting, Wingspan requires a bit more concentration.  Enough concentration that I don’t fully absorb details of a movie/book while knitting.  So I didn’t knit on the way to our destination.  I did get good knitting time in at the end of our trip because it rained pretty much everyday.  On the flight home, I listened to my audiobook and slept.  Once again, no plane knitting.  Despite all that, I made decent progress on the Wingspan shawl since my last update on May 31^st.  I am finishing up the 3^rd set of feathers. The feather tips are extra tedious because you have to read the pattern stitch by stitch, which is particularly onerous. Slow and steady wins the race!

I have greatly enjoyed knitting the shawl so far.  However, I have noticed what I believe to be an error in the pattern.  Each RS row includes increases and decreases.  The decreases are done with one WS slipped stitch and a knitted stitch.  As the pattern is written, the slipped stitch ends up on the bottom of the two stitches after the decrease, twisting the two stitches and the result is not clean, in my opinion.  I began doing the opposite decrease as the pattern states for the decreases.  For example, if the patterns says SSK, then I K2tog, and vice versa. This has resulted in much prettier decreases.  Here is a photo.  The yellow circle stitches are as the pattern states and I don’t think looks very pretty.  The pink circled stitches, I did the opposite decrease and I think lay much nicer.  Personal preference, but I’m happier now.  I am definitely NOT ripping out my shawl to correct all the past decreases, just switching them going forward and I hope it’s not too noticeable.    

I only have one more set of feathers to finish, but have only knit about half of the shawl. I don’t have a timeline on when I’ll finish.  Right now, each row takes about 30 minutes to knit and as the shawl continues to grow, row time will only get longer.  I’ll give myself a generous deadline of October.  HA!

If you'd like to read more of my thoughts on the pattern, I chat about the yarn and techniques used in my previous blog post, scroll down after my finished sweater!