Shawlography Clue 3

So I’m still working on Shawlography.  Stephen West is the master of shawlankets a.k.a.  shawls as big as blankets!  Clue 4 is huge and seemingly never ending.  So, while you wait to see a finished shawl, I thought I’d share a finished Clue 3 with you today!   

In this clue, I learn – finally – to brioche knit!

Clue 3

After the super long Clue 2, I was a bit shocked at how short Clue 3 seemed.  And then I realized that, if you knit the brioche option (Stephen provides a non-brioche option), like I wanted to, there’s a lot of double knitting.  So this clue wasn’t as short as I thought.

Then, just when you finish the brioche, you have the final section, which is a lot of slipping stitches over other stitches.  I didn’t particularly like this section but at least I learned something new.

Thoughts

Brioche was not what I expected, but then I don’t know what I expected.  You knit every row twice, which means you knit a lot.  The result is a super squishy fabric, which is very nice.  But I got frustrated when I’d make a mistake because brioche is not easy to fix, even after watching countless YouTube videos on the subject.  So I have a few mistakes that you’d only see if you stared at it for a long time. 

Will I ever do brioche again?  I think so….maybe.

The slipped stitches were frustrating.  In order to do them, you have to do a lot of yarn overs which meant the yarn was super tight on the needles when it came time to slip stitches over other stitches…  It just felt very messy.  The end product is nice but I definitely don’t want to do those again.

I’m still happy with this shawl.  And I love how many new skills and techniques I’ve gotten to try out.  So, it’s all good!  Now I’m on the never ending bottom border.  Hopefully, I’m done next week!  If I’m super lucky, I will finish it tomorrow!