A knitted shawl

This is a shawl I finished recently, the Iney shawl. The pattern is published inthe book 52 weeks of Shawls. Well, for me there is not enough time to knit a shawl in a week, certainly not this one. It took me almost a year, though I admit there were periods of weeks that I didn't work on it.

About two years ago I bought a kit for a cardigan from Christel Seyfart and after knitting the body I was not happy with the project. Which was pretty irritating, as at the time I had already countless hours of knitting done. This is a photo of the cardigan as far as I got. It is in a plastic bag, waiting for inspiration on how to finish it, if I ever want to do that.

I learned quite a few things from it though: fair isle knitting in the round, felting ends of yarn together so there is no need for weaving in the ends AND not to buy a kit as I like to do things my own way.

When finished there were only a few ends at the start and the end to weave in, while you can see there are continuous colour changes. I used a lot of the wool that was left for the shawl.

Pretty pleased on how my "floats" look (the strands of yarn at the back). 

Knitting a shawl in the round means that at some point you have to cut your knitting. This is called a "steek". Often described as terrifying, but it wasn't that bad. After cutting the edges were knitted, enclosing the steek stitches.

It was not the easiest pattern to follow, the instructions are full of abbreviations which make it difficult to read. As stated before, I like to do things my own way, so I changed a few minor details which made working for me easier. 

It's a very warm, comfortable shawl and I'm pleased with the result.