FO: Antarktis Shawl

Guys, I am on a roll with finishing old projects. I started this project on January 30, 2016, lol. That's a stupid long time for such a simple shawl. In my defense I started this at the same time as several other projects (all of which ended up on my list of WIPs at the end of the year, lol) so it was hard to devote enough time to just this one. Anyway, on to the pictures!

This is the Antarktis shawl by Janina Kallio. I saw it randomly on Ravelry and added it to my favorites quite a while ago and then just kind of forgot about it until one day when I wanted to use a certain skein of yarn :) I bought this skein of Araucania Lonco on ebay a while ago, and last January I was on a stash busting kick, so I started looking through Ravelry for fingering weight 1 skein projects that would work with a variegated cotton, and here we are. I bought this yarn because 1) it was a great deal at just $5.99 including shipping and 2) I loved the color combination. I knew it was cotton when I bought it, so I knew it would have to be a shawl or something.

Also while it's a pretty design and I liked the finished project pics and was excited to have the shawl to wear, I found the project a bit boring to knit. I guess I just like the constant change and easy to see progress of making sweaters. I'm always good with shawls in the beginning since they quickly start to take shape, but when the rows start getting longer I find it harder to keep interested. Thus this project was constantly set aside for other things.

I started at first with a size 6 needle as the pattern suggested, but when I got a ways into the first garter stitch section I pulled it out to test the resulting fabric. Since this is a cotton (and therefor has no halo whatsoever) I found the size 6 needle made the fabric a bit too spaced out. I liked the painterly quality other finished projects had on Ravelry and knew there would be too much separation of stitches with the size 6 needle. So I sized down to a 4 and I like the resulting fabric much better :)

You can see it better here - the pattern is extremely simple, made entirely of the occasional yarn over, k2tog, and kfb. That's as hard as it gets. You just keep going until it reaches a certain number of stitches and then switch to the next stitch pattern. I particularly like the lattice section in this yarn. The colors are vibrant enough to stand out even with so much open work. This makes it very pretty to wear.

One draw back to my choosing this yarn is that the shawl is not particularly drapey - it likes to be put in a position and pinned to stay there. Also blocking this was quite a challenge - I've never wished I had blocking wires more in my life. Because this has so much lace it looks pretty crumpled up and sad just after you knit it. Even the pattern says not to worry if your finished shawl looks the size of a dinner napkin, lol. Once this had a good soak (mostly in an effort to remove excess dye which was coming off on my hands as I knitted), I pinned it out on one side and pulled as hard as the piece could handle. I seriously stretched this thing within an inch of its life. It took a lot of going back and situating to get it mostly smooth at the edges, but I'm very pleased with the result considering this was all done with pins.

As you can see it came out a very nice size. A kind of weird thing happened though that I still don't understand - I only used just over half a skein of yarn for this entire shawl. Every other project on Ravelry lists that they used almost 400 yards, but I only used 260 yards. I kept going back to check, but all my numbers added up and I did not skip anything. My shawl even turned out a similar size to what I've seen online. The only changes I made were to knit this in cotton and to go down 2 needle sizes, and while I understand the needle size will change your yardage I can't possibly imagine it would change things that much. So the project that was designed to use up a pretty skein has left me with almost half of it to use in the future, lol. Ah well. It is pretty though. It has a very water color feel to it I think.

Realistically the shawl will be worn more like this (actually I've worn it already but shifted more to the side and with a shawl pin at my shoulder), meaning it will be a bit more scrunched up and treated like a scarf. I'm glad to finally have this finished and be able to wear it. I'm also glad that it's cotton so it will be light enough to actually wear year round here :)

Summary:
Yarn: Araucania Lonco Multi in colorway 4008 - $5.99 (bought on ebay)
Pattern: Antarktis by Janina Kallio
Time: Not quite 1 year, lol