Ssshhhh....It's the Whispering Pines: A Shawl KAL

I will start off by saying, ahhhh!  This shawl is a gift for a friend, and I'm super nervous.  I've never gifted something I've spent so much time knitting on.  I hope she loves it and finds a use for it!  It's a tricky thing, knitting for others.  Many people just don't love hand-knits, which is CRAZY, LOL, but totally fine.  I just never want to be THAT person - gifting non-useful items, of any sort, to a friend or family member.

Insanely lovely color!

So, here we are:  Whispering Pines by Molly Klatt of A Homespun House podcast.  This is the first shawl pattern she's designed for sale, and it's a super easy knit.  I finished mine just as Terri (the same friend who knitted along with me on the Modern Pixie here) was starting up her lace section....she's quite speedy, as she started later than I did.  I invited (pressured/bossed her into...whatever) Terri to knit along with me again, as I told her she needed something fun and pretty in her life to sort of jazz things up!  I'm glad she agreed to knit along, as....HOLLA!  Hers is so pretty!

Ah!  Terri got one of those great full-shawl pictures I'm so clueless about taking ;)

The pattern has a simple textured stitch involving purls throughout the main body, and the lace section is easy to memorize.  It did involve one stitch I'd never done before - and I did spend one row doing it slightly wrong, so, I ripped back and re-started (well...and re-started 1 or 2 more times, as it turned out my stitch count at that point was wrong).

The best representation of the blue colorway

I did shorten my shawl, for fear of running out of yarn.  (I did this because I also wanted to have a full three lace repeat sections.)  I wasn't actually sure of the base of my yarn, which meant I didn't know the yardage - it was either a sad 380 yards of yarn....or a happy 420 yards, LOL.  And I never did weigh it in order to figure it out.  I used Black Trillium on whatever base in whichever colorway, aha!  I know I bought this yarn years ago at Twisted in Portland, but that's apparently all I know.  (They no longer carry Black Trillium, though Happy Knits does!)  I did go with a size 5 needle, and part of me wishes I'd gone with a size 4 because of how deep (or long, vertically), the shawl is.  It will probably look better worn differently than my Evaporate, for example.  I think I need shawl placement lessons, LOL.

Terri used Madelinetosh Tosh Sock in Wood Violet, and she went with size 6 needles - which, in her case, gave her a looser gauge, but she likes the fabric, and she did shorten her shawl, width-wise, like I did.  From the pictures, it does seem my shawl is longer, top to bottom, but it could be the blocking, too.  She enjoyed the pattern and also found it easy to follow/great for a first shawl.  Holla at successfully finishing her first shawl!  (And insanely fast, by the way!)

I WILL say there might be fifty too many picots for me, though :O  When there are that many, it takes eighty years to bind off, and I think I like the look of fewer picots, but I wasn't sure how to change that (read: didn't want to bother taking the time to figure it out), so, I left it.  As for Terri, she said she didn't block out all the picots carefully, so, they don't fully stand out, but I think it looks great, and it's always something that can be fixed later!

Molly did have inspiration for this shawl, and it comes from her spending time on her grandparents' property when she was younger, coupled with Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. If you watch her video podcast, then you know she loved spending time with her grandmother when she was growing up, knitting and talking, and Molly has had her grandmother on the podcast a couple of times, which is neat.  The lace section of the shawl is a tree/pinecone motif, representative of the area around the house her grandparents used to live in.