The Weight of Zombies

Last year after I relearned to knit I decided I wanted to attempt my first shawl.  Because really I got into this whole knitting thing to knit socks and shawls, right?!  I’d been eyeing the Hitchhiker Shawl, but when my friend Nicole knit the Weigh It Shawl 1 I started thinking that might be the way to go.  Nicole agreed that the Weigh It Shawl would be a good first shawl since it is mostly garter stitch and encouraged me to give it a try.

If you’re not familiar with the Weigh It Shawl, it basically calls for a skein of Miss Babs Yowza and doesn’t require counting rows or stitches really because you’re weighing your yarn (thus the name Weigh It Shawl).  At DFW Fiber Fest in 2015 I saw in person and fell in love with the Zombie Prom colorway, so I knew that’s what I wanted to use for my shawl.  I ordered a skein and bought the pattern and even treated myself to my first set of Signature Needle Arts circular needles.  I shared my stash enhancement on Episode 4 of my podcast.

I really love those Signature needles.  I did have a little bit of trouble with them near the end of the shawl where they would come unscrewed from the cable, but I think that was due to user error and no fault of the needles.  But of course it happened when I had 8 million stitches on the needles and when that cable became unscrewed and a good chunk of those stitches fell off I about died.  I checked with some other folks that assured me they had never had a problem with their Signatures doing this so I determined it was probably something with the way I was holding my needles or somehow twisting that cable enough that my knitting motion was causing the cable to become unscrewed.  Here’s hoping I can avoid that in the future!!

I also had a few cases where I suddenly completely forgot what I was doing and started making something up or dropped a stitch and didn’t know how to fix it other than rip back, and so on.  But, I think it’s just all part of the learning process.

And oh I was loving the color of my yarn.  When I caked up my skein it was lighter on one end and darker on the other, so I started with the lighter end so that it would be darker as I knit to the bottom of the shawl.  It’s subtle, but I like the effect.

In fact, I loved the color so much it inspired me to make a zippered pouch out of some of my Tula Pink fabric.  It wasn’t big enough to hold my shawl, but perfect for a future sock project.

I also participated in my first Knitalong with this shawl.  Suburban Stitcher hosted the Around Your Neck KAL and I really pushed to finish up my shawl in time but didn’t make it.  I was all the way to my bind off when disaster struck – I ran out of yarn.  So, I ended up setting my shawl aside for a good long time before I had the heart to go back and fix it so I could bind off.  Because I’d already run out of yarn trying to bind off once, I opted to not do the picot bind off and instead used the Russian bind off she gives as an alternative.  I will definitely give the picot bind off another try in a project in the future though because I loved the way it looked.

I finished it on the morning of New Year’s Eve.  And I am thrilled with how it turned out.  These photos were taken in extremely harsh sunlight, so it’s hard to get a sense of the beauty of this yarn, but you get the idea of the shape and size of the shawl itself.

Project details: My first shawl!!  Weigh It Shawl 1 by Susan B. Anderson using Miss Babs Yowza in the Zombie Prom colorway.  I used size 8 Signature circulars.  Started on 4/27/2015 and finished on 12/31/2015.

You can see my project page on Ravelry here.

So so so in love with my shawl.

And on January 2nd, I wore it on its maiden voyage out into the world.

I’ve already got yarn and the pattern for the Weigh It Shawl 2 that I hope to start sometime soon.  I can’t wait!

**Edited to add:

My shawl has now been blocked and boy does that make a difference!  If only it wasn’t 105 degrees outside!!

I am grateful for trying new things.

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