Initial Evaluation

OK, the Progressive Shawl is on pins and wires, and I have a chance to do a first evaluation. (The second will come after it's dry.)

First off, this baby is really big, too big for the bed. Wish I had those foam insulation boards that I couldn't fit into the car. One corner is pinned to the side of the mattress. Don't know what sort of weirdness, if any, this will produce. But big is OK .

There is only one glaring (to me) knitting error where the edging was knit on. You can't really see it in this picture. I could do a close up, but naaah.



As I suspected, the pick up ratio for the border could be improved. Just off the needles the garter center bulged noticeably in relation to the stockinette inner border. I've tried to compensate in blocking. It looks OK now, but I have the border stretched pretty hard, and I "hae me dooots" about how it will behave when the pins come out.

(Note to self: What if I had picked up at the same ratio, worked the first rows in plain garter with a few judicious increases before beginning inner border pattern?)

The texture contrast between the stockinette and the garter based portions of the border is less striking than I had hoped. On the other hand, the garter based pattern opened up very nicely.



Those double yarn overs in the edging really
opened up

The narrow edging along the top is either a series of really little points or a biggish picot, depending how you look at it. If I were doing it over I still might opt for a single repeat of faggoting with a smooth edge.

Hope this is dry before bedtime. If the sun is out tomorrow I'll get DH to take a shot of me in the classic "triangle shawl shot from the back with arms extended" pose.