The straight-away

Thank you for all the lovely comments on the shawl. Your support and admiration have kept me going. The chocolate espresso bread is straight out of Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. You can get some recipes from an article published in Mother Earth News and from the authors' blog posts. It is a tad too long in the instructions for me to repeat it here.

Here is a view of what the shawl will look like when it is done. Of course it isn't blocked yet so you can see puckers on one side and it is stretched out on the other side. The edging is not grafted yet and the neck edging needs to be done but these are tiny efforts compared to what has been completed.

To celebrate, and because I needed a break with easy knitting, I decided to start a new shawl. This is loosely based on Ingili from Føroysk Bindingarmynstur / Faroese Knitting Patterns aka Bundanaurriklaedid. I am not doing a lace pattern, unlike the original, and my gauge is not as fine as the one pictured in Judy Gibson's site (at the link). I am just doing a simple st pattern of 3 rows knit and 1 row purl. A closeup shows the ridges.

The sts are all crowded on the needle so it is not easy to see in the bigger picture. But each 2 rows are smaller than the previous 2 so it will get easier as I go on. I started with a provisional CO as I'll come back and figure out how to finish the bottom edge after I complete the shawl.