If you were reading along with the WIP Wednesday posts, you know this shawl gets to be a bit of a doozy. Glacerie by Hilary Smith Callis is one of those somewhat deceptive shawls, the ones that look super pretty and somehow you’re never quite prepared for the amount of stitches you’re working with at the end (Hilary also designed the incredibly beautiful Citron shawl, if you’ve knit that/heard the stories).
Don’t get me wrong—I LOVED knitting this shawl. I loved the scallopy bits and changing colors. I’m especially pleased with the colors, to be honest, because they’re not my usual kind of combination. I tend to gravitate toward deeper colors and higher contrast in my multiple colored, non-self striping projects (see example a, example b, example c, example d). For this project, I challenged myself to use yarns from one dyer, partly to see if I could do it and partly because I needed to use a percentage of that dyer’s yarn for this to qualify for a knitalong. The orange was leftover from a pair of socks I knit last year, and I only used 92 yards of the yarn I had leftover from the socks (and I still have yarn left in the orange). I have enough yarn left in all of these colors that I may try to eke out a pair of mittens… one of these days. Alllll of this is to say that I’m really pleasantly surprised with the way the colors came out and how much I am in love with them.
I have no idea how many stitches are on the needles at the end of this shawl. I just knew the rows were taking longer and longer, but they were all in garter stitch at the very end, so that was delightful. I say this not to discourage anyone from knitting them, but to encourage you to use a longer circular needle than I did—I was afraid to take this shawl with me anywhere because I thought the stitches would just completely drop off. Because I’m a dunce who didn’t use a long enough needle. (Do as I say, not as I do.)
I knit the larger size of the shawl, in slightly lighter yarn on slightly smaller needles, so the finished size is some kind of hybrid between the small and the large shawl. It’s really wide, so it wraps around the neck nicely and stays in place, but it’s still relatively shallow and doesn’t bunch up under coats.
I’m so excited to have a new neck thing to wear this winter!
All of that hard work paid off for sure. I loved the pops of color. I’m going to ravelry to put this one in my favorites. It looks like a stashbuster of a shawl.