The Accidental FO

The accidental FO

How does one accidentally create an FO?

If like me, you tend to jump into things with both feet, it's quite simply really.

A chance mention by Victoria of the wonderful Eden Cottage Yarns about a forthcoming KAL made my knitterly ears prick up. The pattern in question is a wonderful shawl - Quadratic - designed by David O'Kelly. Using 1.5 skeins of sock weight yarn this is a generous garter stitch shawl which uses small scraps of leftovers or mini skeins to create fun, colourful and rather addictive stripes.

Garter stitch - check

Mini skeins - check

2 skeins of delicious ECY Titus sitting in my stash - check

Faster than you can say KNIT! I was off and away.

The work week from hell, kids homework woes (curse you, long division) and a husband working on a different continent meant that I was sorely in need of a soothing garter stitch (and red wine).

Quadratic shawl by David O'Kelly

Without giving away the "secret sauce", the pattern has you start out with a large number of stitches and then work decreases until the end. At the beginning the more closely spaced stripes spur you on to work "just one more row". And once you are past the half way point, the ever decreasing stitch count means that the project just flies off the needles.

It is rare for me to knit a shawl so quickly, especially one with 150m of yarn but this was a true pleasure. A sort of "perfect storm" of pattern, yarn and stress and I am truely delighted with the finished product.

The shawl measures a generous 55" by 25" after very gentle blocking and patting (lots of patting) and it is wonderfully wearable.

Quadratic shawl - in action

Of course there is the minor detail of the fact that I have managed to start and finish the shawl before the official start date of Dec 1st.

Drat! Oh well, I will just have to make another. It's a hard life ;)

For all the KAL details check the ECY group on Ravelry - here

See you there :)