FO: Perseverance Shawl

I didn’t talk about this much because it was supposed to be a secret, but I kind of failed at that. Another Sarah friend of mine had a birthday earlier this summer, and I wanted to knit her something. She’d been coveting this yarn—Fresh from the Cauldron’s BFL sock in the Eccentric colorway—for years, and while I had always loved it in the skein, I wasn’t sure that I, myself, would wear it much. Too pretty for socks, and I have trouble remembering to wear shawls (…why I keep knitting them, I haven’t figured out).

The pattern is Perseverance, and it’s a wonderful free easy shawl pattern. Lots of stockinette, some linen stitch, a little bit of reverse stockinette, and then back to stockinette: perfect for special handpainted yarns. Not boring, but dedicated to showing off the yarn.

This was a pretty fast knit, aided and abetted by feeling sort of unwell on Sunday. I got up, sat on my couch, watched some Sons of Anarchy while knitting, went to my volunteer shift, came back home and sat right back on the couch to knit (finished season 3 of Sons of Anarchy; I really can’t recommend this show enough). By the time I felt better in the evening, I was over the idea of packing, so I just went ahead and kept on knitting.

I had some trouble with binding off this shawl, namely in that I was a TERRIBLE judge of how much yarn I had versus how much was needed to get a stretchy bind off. But that was entirely user error, so be smarter than me. The yarn, which had 375 yards, yielded a good sized shawl, with three full pattern repeats and the last stockinette and linen stitch portions. If you have more yarn, say 440, you could probably work another full repeat for a slightly larger shawl.

Three projects finished in July! Why am I being more productive when I’ve got a serious work deadline and packing to do?