Mixed Feelings

Today I finally bound off my Multnomah shawl.

Today I discovered my phone camera.

This hasn't actually been on the needles for years (although it might feel like it) but was started a mere two weeks ago at a conference... well sort of, it had a few false starts before that. The lengthly feeling has mostly been to do with the amount of time spent knitting vs tinking. Whilst I'm pretty sure it's mathematically impossible I feel like more of the latter was done than the former. Around half way through the Feather and Fan repeats I lost the ability to count.


Feather and Fan is a pretty straight forward pattern with only one row with any lace knitting at all:


[k2tog] 3 times, [yo, k] 6 times, [k2tog] 3 times


Unfortunately I suddenly lost the ability to count to six. This shawl uses 40 Feather and Fan rows (10 times the 4 row repeat). I knit the last eight rows at least three times over. I knit the middle ones a few more times than that. Woops!


So, happy happy party, I'm done! Only thing is I'm not sure I love this shawl... I cast on because:


1) I had the yarn and I wanted to knit something that wasn't socks. Ravelry showed me some nice projects using this pattern for my yarn and one was even in my colourway -- it looked great.


2) It wasn't a fancy lace shawl. I love knitting complicated delicate lace BUT I just can't work out how to wear those shawls in the everyday. This yarn wasn't suited to a complex pattern (too busy) but was perfect for a casual shawlette to wear as a neckerchief with jeans, to work, anyday I wanted.


3) Whatever I knit had to be pretty mindless since I was starting at a conference where I was expecting to be moderately busy (I was actually a bit busier than that and didn't start the shawl until the second to last day).


Now I've bound off I still think the yarn/colour/pattern combination works and is perfect for casual wear. It was also mostly good mindless knitting (until I totally lost my mind, but I suspect no knitting can handle that).


So what's wrong?


It's quite small. Other projects in this yarn did use larger needles but I tried that in a few of my false starts and didn't like the fabric at all. Unblocked this shawl doesn't really wrap comfortably round my neck in the bandit style I was hoping for. I'm crossing my fingers that it blocks a little larger but if not - do I frog? If I could face it I guess I'd rip the entire feather and fan section, add a few more garter rows and then reknit (and possibly extend) the feather and fan.


Fingers crossed blocking will do the trick. I'm not sure I want this to move back to the "still unfinished" pile.