FO Friday - Bright Lights shawl

I knit Andrea Mowry's Bright Lights shawl out of my own handspun, and there are very few joys more joyful than knitting something where I've managed to spin the perfect yarn for the situation.

The project was great for taking out and about - simple and intuitive. As usual (I ranted about it here) Andrea Mowry writes out the pattern as if they are a bunch of individual rows, rather than a simple, cohesive pattern. She wrote it out as a 16 row repeat, when it is actually a two row pattern, with one tiny tweak every 16th row. And then there are 30 finishing rows that are the same as the pattern repeat, but written out separately. The whole pattern is 8 pages, but the actual information needed could fit on an index card. I guess that's modern pattern writing.

Why do I keep buying and knitting Andrea Mowry's patterns when I don't enjoy her pattern writing style? Because they are simple and effective and (usually) very wearable.

Once I had the hang of the pattern I didn't have to look at it at all, so it was very suitable public and travel knitting.

Since I've finished it it's been my go-to scarf - just the girth length, the perfect weight for our current weather and so very pretty!

A project full of joy from start to well after the finish. I have enough left-overs from the shawl that i should be able to squeeze out a matching hat, to get maximum joy from this yarn and project.

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Unravelled wednesday and WAYRN - the one where I prepare

We are heading off for some camping and hiking and general R&R on Friday, so I'm currently in planning and preparing mode. Of course that mainly means deciding what to knit - I'm going to make the Old Romance cardigan by Joji Locatelli. The yarn is wound and I'm ready to go. I completed Leon's Winter Set (2023) just in time, and it's currently blocking. I'm reading Georgette Hayer's Fredrica , which I am enjoying very much. Regency romance is so sweet and, unlike current romance offerings, I know it won't suddenly tumble into gynaecological territory! For unexplained reasons, NetGalley is offering some Georgette Heyer books at the moment - (maybe it's re-release?) and I'm taking this opportunity to read a few more of them And that's my week in knitting and reading. To read my all my book reviews, and to see everything I knit, you can find me on Ravelry as Sharondoublekni t and on GoodReads as Sharondblk . I'm joining in with Kat ...

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Remember how I took every form of transport known to man a fortnight ago? Well, I was missing just one thing, suburban trains. But today I got to remedy that, knitting my way to Dandenong for work. Yay? My Char jumper has been knitting up ridiculously fast. It's easy, pleasant and a well written pattern. I'm reading Rachael Herron's latest book The Ones Who Matter Most . It's a good read so far, family centered fiction, easy to read but still emotionally challenging. I'm listening to Evelyn Waugh's Men At Arms . I'm enjoying it, I didn't really know what to expect, but some of it reminds me of Catch 22, in that it catalogues the absurdities of war and bureaucracy. The narrator has the perfect upper crust English accent and I'm very pleased it's the first of a trilogy. And that's another week of reading, knitting and catching trains everywhere for me. Do pop along to Ginny's blog to see what she and the rest of the yarnalong ...

Why Andrea Mowry, why? (A rant and a rather nice finished object)

As mentioned, prior to our hiking trip I suddenly, and rather randomly, decided to knit Andrea Morwy's Traveler Shell . It's basically an open fronted rectangle in a knit purl pattern. The pattern is FOURTEEN pages long. Why is the pattern 14 pages long? Because, instead of explaining the ten row repeat and then putting the shaping on top of that (e.g. decrease while continuing to knit in pattern), she writes out the entire ten row knit purl sequence every time something changes. Additionally, most of the time she starts with even number being the right side and wrong numbers being the right side,which is just plain odd. It's confusing and it's like she wants to keep you looking at the pattern for every row, rathe than following the very intuitive stitch pattern, which I had memorised after one repeat. The instructions for the band just say 'pick up x number of stitches'. No ratios, no acjnowledgement that different bits of the band have different ratios. Afte...

What I made, by Sharon

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