Greta Magnusson

Pattern: Greta Magnusson by Kristen Kapur
Yarn: Madelinetosh Euro Sock in Himiko (purple) and Good Silence (natural with grape splashes)
Needles: US 7
Made for: a gift
Time to completion: 1 month and 6 days

This is a gift for a special lady who always gives me hand-knitted gifts.  It’s the first time that I’ve had my act together enough to knit for her, in time for a special occasion.  (My yearly knitting goal is something to be very thankful for, in terms getting gifts knitted.)

However, this project gave me some issues and there are some mistakes. Once I got the hang of the broken brioche, the shawl worked up quickly…but the brioche took me several tries to master. YouTube videos (always my fallback) of brioche did not help, since this was broken brioche. (I finally figured out that I wasn’t bringing the yarn forward at the right time.) I frogged the brioche three times, I think, before I thought I’d gotten the hang of it and it was still slightly off.  So, I hope, as a knitter, the recipient understands and accepts these little hiccups as something that makes this shawl unique.  Indeed, no one will have made this mistake quite like me!

This pattern taught me two new techniques – brioche (albeit broken) and the i-cord bind-off. The latter took forever to do – especially when your patience is running thin at the end of a project…. But it was gorgeous, and well worth the effort!

And now that I’ve figured out the pattern, I want to knit it again! The first part – the purple – was so quick to knit in garter stitch. And if I hadn’t had to start and restart the brioche so many time, it would have worked up quickly, as well.

As always, Madelinetosh yarn is a joy knit with.  I chose this yarn because of the weight and the knit.  It’s sock yarn with some nylon and ideally, I would have wanted a more luxurious base for a shawl.  But this was the only Madelinetosh with the correct yardage for the project.  One other little gripe is that the purple speckles are not very prominent in the natural color.  From what I’d seen online, I thought they would be more numerous.  I hope that I can knit this again, before I forget how the brioche works.