Vertices unite shawl, finished

Some projects come along at just the right moment, and this shawl is one of them. After several rather hectic months, I wanted to get back into the rhythm of knitting, but wanted a fun, low-pressure, but still creatively inspiring project. I love knitting socks, but I wanted to knit something with more colorplay and this shawl was just the thing.

I so enjoyed going through partial skeins of fingering weight yarn in my stash, mulling over color combinations and trying to figure out how certain colors would look striped together. In the end, I just started knitting and chose my colors for each section as I came to it, based on what I thought the shawl needed. As a general rule, I like a slightly lower contrast shawl (overall) and I tried to balance the placement of warm-toned yarns with cool-toned yarns. And I absolutely adore the i-cord bind off, it really finished off the shawl in a beautiful way.

The finished product is incredibly wearable, as (fingering-weight) shawls often are, and I'm looking forward to wearing this with just about anything, since the colors are quite versatile. I'm very pleased with the modified medium size, and if I knit this again, I would knit this size.

On Saturday, we went to Chicago for the day to see a friend, and Nicholas held Cooper as he snapped a few quick photos of me wearing it on our way back to the car.

Details

For more details, see my ravelry project page

Yarn: various leftovers from numerous projects, some detailed on the project page

Size: Following the notes of a few other knitters, I made a modified "medium" size. The pattern is offered in a small size (too small for my taste) and a large (much too large for my taste), so this was perfect.

Pattern: Vertices Unite by Stephen West

Needles: US 4 (the suggested size, which is rare for me)

Specifics/modifications: I altered the size to make a "medium," and strayed from my original plan for color/yarn dispersement. Also, I used German short rows, rather than the short rows included in the pattern. Otherwise, I knit this intuitively, not minding stitch counts too closely and just enjoying myself.