Bad spellers of the world, untie!

That's what someone told me this shawl always brings to their mind.

What: Vertices unite /Stephen West
How: Circular needle 3.5 mm
From: Kässäkerho Pom Pom Donegal Tweed, 271 g

This spring has run past me while I've been busy designing new knitting patterns (from which you'll hear more about in June as I publish them). It was about time to knit something simple, brainless, and just for fun.

Last August, I started a no-yarn-shopping thingy that lasted all the way to February. And all that time all I wanted to do was to get me some of these gorgeous Pom Pom Donegal Tweeds that a Finnish yarn shop was posting on Instagram. I knew exactly what I would buy as soon as my yarn shopping strike would be over - and so I did!

I knew I wanted to knit garter stitch and stripes with these pale pink, minty green and silver grey skeins. Possibly a Westknits shawl. I had fallen in love with this shawl I saw on Instagram that used the same pale pink as one color. I went through all of Stephen's shawl patterns until I finally gave up and said to my self, if you want to be a copy cat, be a Copy cat with a capital C. So I chose to make Vertices unite.

The shawl was a really fun knit. You knit one piece at a time of these triangles and paralellograms with either increases and decreases, or short rows. Some of the pieces are striped with two colors and some are one color. Once all the pieces have been knitted, the whole thing is framed with i-cord.

I had to be a bit of a rebel. The pattern tells you to leave stitches on a holder every time you finish a piece but I found this utterly unnecessary. The stitches fitted on the needles just fine as long as you took care to make sure you were leaving them in the right direction. This of course meant that I couldn't admire the shawl while knitting it since it was enormous and my cable was short.

The pattern also calls for five colors but as three skeins had just enough meters, I used only three colors. The pattern has two sizes, small and large and I wanted to knit myself a shlanket. I had to do careful calculations on how to use the colors but three skeins was just enough and I managed.

This was meant to be a relaxing knit between all that manic designing but I didn't quite pull it off. On every other piece I felt I was in a hurry and couldn't knit fast enough, and every other piece was mellow, relaxed knitting just for fun. Oh well, I got half right.

The shawl turned out beautiful. A true favorite shawl. And I can't seem to get enough of these pastel colors. I can still remember how just five years ago mint green was a curse word in my books. And now it's the bestest thing in the world. The times are changing.