A wee bit of nostalgia

Now that the Scotland blog series is over I thought it was time to reveal to you what I was knitting on in the pictures. The inspiration for this project brings about a wave of nostalgia and takes us back
 to the days when I just started knitting and I thought that an unblocked shawl on top of a staple of moving boxes made for good project photos. Ahh…those were the days, weren’t it?

Well hello old student house and moving memories!

Despite its rough start, the shawl in this picture has proven to be one of my all time favourites. I wear it on cold days, brought it with me to every festival I went to and some sharp-eyed blog reader may have seen it in the Scotland pictures. The problem is, it’s starting to show. I thought that it was time to knit a new one. I didn’t want to make the same pattern again, but it did have to meet the same requirements. I wanted it to be made in worsted weight (for warmth), it had to be fairly large, textured and I wanted it to be green. With these requirements in mind I went on the hunt for yarn and a pattern.

For the yarn I wanted to try one of the thicker options of the Malabrigo family. I used Malabrigo sock for shawls before and it is one of my favourite shawl options. Sock would be too thin so I went to have a look at the thicker options. I knew Malabrigo Worsted weight is one of the most popular yarns on Ravelry, but it is an unplied yarn which does not have my preference. Rios, the plied option for a worsted weight yarn looked much better. However Rios is available in less colourways than Malabrigo worsted, and the shade of green I wanted was not one of the Rios colours so in the end I did go for worsted. Should horrible pilling ensue, I will report that immediately.

The pattern is Terra by Jared Flood which was exactly what I was looking for in a replacement shawl. I thoroughly enjoyed knitting this shawl and might make it again in a different colour. I was a bit bummed that the lace bit was only charted and not written out. I’m not sure why that is, as in my experience most independent designers both chart their lace patterns and write them out. In any case, for this pattern it was not really a problem for me personally, as the lace is easy, but I do wonder if Brooklyn Tweed doesn’t miss a bit of a market here since there is quite a number of knitters out there that only work with written out patterns and refuse to touch anything with a chart.

I ran out of yarn, even though I did buy more than was specified in the pattern, so I skipped a bit of the lace chart. I was not super bothered by this, as my shawl was already more than large enough, so I decided against buying another skein of yarn to finish it according to the instructions. In case you do want to make this shawl in full, be aware that you need more yarn than specified in the pattern.