Wholehearted

Up until now I've only knit triangle shawls and I was ready to try a  heart shaped one. Fortunately, for a brief period of time during the holidays, the designer of the Wholehearted shawl, Erika Flory, offered her version for free over at Ravelry. I downloaded the pattern and dumped all my fingering weight yarn onto the floor hoping I could find something from my stash that would work. Since I'm awful knowing what colors combinations work together I asked my husband to help me. David's first response when he saw the yarn pile was "This isn't all your yarn?" Hmmmm, I guess he may have an idea after all how big my stash is! I reassured him that this wasn't all my yarn it was just the yarn that could be used for this project. I'm so impressed (and a little jealous) that he came up with the winning combination in a matter of minutes. The self striping yarn was a gift from a friend and had been sitting in the stash waiting for just the right project and the black had been bought for another project that I haven't gotten to. Together they were perfect.

The details:
Needle size: 6
Yarn: Regia Hand-dye Effect (Pink, Purple, Blue, Yellow) & Knit Picks Gloss (black)

This pattern is easy knitting but there were a few problems with the written pattern. A couple of the errors are corrected on the Ravelry information page but as of this blog post they are not updated on the written instructions. In addition, my stitch count didn't match the pattern. At the end of the shawl body I had 303 stitches rather than 305. I did a row by row stitch count in order to check the math and it still came out 303.   At the end of the edging I had a stitch count of 351 rather than 349, now I was plus 2 stitches rather than 2 stitches short!  For the picot bind off I switched to color B and worked two more rows, as expected, I ended with 357 stitches rather than 355.  I double and triple checked the math (the pattern has 4 increases on the the right side rows and 2 increases on the wrong side rows) and I still haven't been able to reconcile the difference.  No one on Ravelry has noted this same problem so it might be me but, if so, I don't know what it is!

One of the design details that makes this shawl interesting is the picot bind off. I had never worked the picot bind off before but I had seen it demonstrated in a video and saved it with a pin to my Knitting Techniques & Tutorials Pinterest board.

I love this shawl and I'm keeping it for me!  I'm sure I'll be making more because this would make a great gift.