Shawl Season

Eight months to the day that I started Citron Grand, I finally finished it. I'm still laughing when I think about how the Sailor and I wound ALL of the yarn as we were about to leave for the airport for our cruise. 

I naively thought that I would finish this ENTIRE shawl on the ship.  In SEVEN days.

What was I thinking?! 

A month after the cruise, I hadn't gotten very far (you can see just how far here.) I blame all of the other projects I had going at the same time.

I really had no idea how long knitting a shawl with lace-weight yarn would take. Clearly I had some very high ambitions. (I also had no idea how long it would take to fix a serious mistake. Because of my debacle, I renamed this the Patient Shawl.)

But now it's done. Off the needles, blocked and ready to wear in time for today's day full of sunshine and fresh chilly air. 

The photo in the Ravelry pattern shows only seven sections (the original free Citron is much smaller -- only five pattern repeats). I wanted to go all out and make a BIG shawl with all 10 pattern repeats in Citron Grand. 

Go big or go home, I say.  

In the end, I luckily estimated that I was about to run out of yarn, before it was too late, so I only made it to level 9 of the repeat section. I'm not sure if my gauge was off, or if I lost quite a bit of yarn when I had to rip out an entire section, but I'm glad I caught it before I had to rip out 1000 stitches at a time.

Even though I cut it extraordinarily close, I managed to finish my shawl with just enough yarn to spare. 

THIS is all I had leftover: 

Just enough yarn to keep in case I need to patch a hole years from now. The yarn is Malabrigo Lace in Verde Esperanza.  

And the shawl is definitely big enough to keep me warm. Shawl season is finally here.