I explored a new knitting strategy in a previous Postcards at Sea post.  This new practice of multiple (but not too many cast-ons is working well for me. Here is something that is finished!

This is Montbretia, the cover design for Kate Davies recent publication The Book of Haps (2016).  It is designed by Carol Feller. As you can see, it as asymmetrical shape with quite a wide wingspan. It is extraordinarily comfortable, sitting on the shoulders securely as a shawl or wrapped around as a scarf.

Funnily enough, I didn’t buy this book for the shawls, I bought it for the historical essays by Kate Davies. They didn’t disappoint me. I fell in love with some of the shawls afterwards.

I used stashed yarns for my version. The grey is Australian Merino by Pear Tree Yarns, a 4 ply in soft grey that I picked up as a kilo bulk buy of discontinued yarn at the Australian Sheep and Wool Show at least 7 years ago. It is not a particularly well spun yarn, full of slubs and just not really sturdy enough but it was perfect for this project. The ultra marine blue is a discontined colour from Harris Tweed yarns that I got as a souvenir when we were in the UK a while ago. The other colours are all Jamieson and Smith oddments from stash.

My shawl doesn’t look quite the same as Carol Feller’s. There are two rather significant knitting-in-fog moments that shall now remain as an artifact of my long sea journey. The first is the split from the ultramarine blue to another shade dissected by the grey. When I got all my yarn together, I thought the 50 gram ball of Harris Tweed was actually 100 grams and set off confidently, only to run out, realise my error and resolve with another shade. It is a very forgiving design for accidents like this.

The second foggy moment occurs in the pink stripes at the edge. Between the slipped stitches section and the stripes, I put my pink yarn somewhere and couldn’t find it anywhere. I had to substitute with another shade. Several weeks after bind off I found the correct pink yarn in a random bag where it had no business being but I still can’t remember having put it there.

No matter, it is a lovely shawl, almost because of these moments rather than in spite of them!

Ravelry details are here.