The shawl that almost wasn’t: A Shawlography retrospective

I don’t know if I was alone in assuming that the four weeks over which the Shawlography pattern was revealed also meant four weeks was a reasonable timeframe to expect to finish the project, but good lord it was not nearly enough.

Sections 5-12 took approximately one eternity to complete. I fell behind almost immediately in that second week, even though technically I wasn’t working on a truly tangible deadline so there was no “behind” in which to fall.

It didn’t help that October-November brought maximum chaos with it. Some good, like being in my best friend’s upcoming wedding, preparing our house to sell and getting ready to move. Some not so good, like when our cat got out and was missing for eight horrible hours before, thankfully, we found her safe and sound. And then the utter grief and tragedy of my grandfather’s illness and subsequent passing. The past month has been a lot.

Shawlography became something for me to focus on when everything else became too overwhelming. Instead of designer Stephen West’s “say yes, don’t stress,” my mantra eventually became “screw it, keep going.” Which applied to both the pattern and to my life.

Ran out of one blue yarn? Screw it, grab a new blue from the stash and keep going. Ran out of red entirely? Screw it, I’m almost finished, just skip over its place in the colour sequence and keep going. One of my interchangeable needles snapped in half? Screw it, attach the next needle size up and keep going.

I also at some point forgot to decrease stitches at the start of each right-side row, which probably made me run out of yarn faster as my stripes slowly lengthened. But I course-corrected and kept going because over my dead body was I going to rip back all my work and start the process over again. So I do have a weirdly long, kinda lumpy segment in my edge but I can hide it when I wear my shawl.

Shawlography’s end result drew ire from some corners of the knitting community. With it being a mystery knit-along, you can’t see the full meal deal until the very last moments, so I can see how that would bother some people if the pattern didn’t go in the direction they wanted. Life’s too short for projects you don’t like, after all!

As for me, I’m happy with the result. Yes, some of that happiness comes from the very fact that it’s blessedly finished, but I also think it’s a beautiful piece that I’m very proud of. I love that it’s just the right size where it wraps neatly around my whole body. I love that I feel like a vibrant tropical bird. I love that I made a dent in my stash.

I love that it’s mine.