This weekend I completed a 4-month-long project of absolute beauty - the Fantastitch shawl by WestKnits.
If you do any sort of craft with materials, you probably end up with scraps, partial bits, leftovers... things that probably aren't enough to do a whole project with. For a knitter, a project which allows you to use up those little bits is called a "stash-buster".
In the depths of winter, my amazingly talented second cousin shared pictures of a finished shawl that I instantly fell in love with. She connected me to WestKnits on Ravelry (social media for knitters and crocheters) and I chose a WestKnits pattern of my own to tackle - similar, but not quite the same to hers. Then I went to my yarn stash and pulled out everything I had in fingering (skinny) weight (or thereabouts) that
wasn't good for knitting socks. It was a mix of little bits of leftover Knit Picks Palette (from before I realized that this was not good sock yarn...), handspun skeins from my brother's first wife, leftovers from a pair of fingerless mitts my sister made for me (and then sent the partial skeins for me to use), fancy yarns I had purchased from a yarn store liquidation with my mom at least a decade ago, excessive amounts of alpaca from a doomed sweater project, and this beautiful clay/coral-red naturally dyed yarn I purchased from Hespa when we were in Iceland. I decided this last one would be the color I'd like to highlight and "feature" most in the shawl. The actual pattern suggested a number of colors and an order in which to use them... but after many minutes (hours?) puzzling over a "plan," I decided that the best way to go about it would be to pick my colors section by section based on what I wanted to highlight and which I thought would show that texture best, etc. And so it began...
I have not been great with sticking power when it comes to projects like this in the past, but I think that what this project had which others did not was variety. WestKnits designs all play with texture and color and the Fantastitch shawl was no exception. The change every 10-20 rows (give or take) of pattern and color(s) kept it interesting throughout the intervening months, and my willingness to play around with (instead of planning) the colors kept me guessing and being creative.
Now, it didn't
have to turn out so huge... but I loved the "honeycomb" pattern just before the end, and doing the shortened version of the pattern would've denied me that. Not to mention I wouldn't have used up as much yarn. In the end, I counted around 15 (mostly partial) skeins of yarn that I used up in this project. I opened up
tons of space in my yarn storage, and I made something stunningly beautiful that I just can't help but stare at. All in all, a very good outcome! And now I can spread my wings and fly on to all those other projects I've got going on...
