FO: Oscilloscope Shawl

I finished the Oscilloscope Shawl this morning over a cup of coffee and it is currently drying on my bed. I don't make many shawls, in fact, I've only finished one shawl prior to this one, the Age of Brass and Steam shawl, way back in 2011. So I have no blocking mats, wires, T-pins, or anything generally accepted that one should have to block lace. I'm just stretching it open on a blanket and hoping for the best.

I'm really happy with it! It's very large, which is great, because the Age of Brass and Steam isn't big enough to stay put around my neck, so I never wear it. One of the things that contributed to actually finishing it was that it was knit side-to-side rather than bottom-to-top. As an unapologetic Product Knitter, I love decreases. They mean that every row is shorter and the knitting goes faster and faster. That type of snowball-effect knitting is my favorite. The most crushing thing to my gentle, FO-loving spirit is to be stuck with the fewest stitches at the beginning, increasing endlessly. It takes knitting from being fun to a total slog for me. This summary of my psyche makes it sound like I don't particularly enjoy the knitting part of knitting, which isn't true. It's just that I like to get things done and I like to feel like I'm always making progress toward the end and bottom-up shawls don't feel that way to me. Thus, 4 years since I knit my one-and-only shawlette.

As previously mentioned, the yarn is KnitPicks Swish Worsted in Wonderland Heather, which I must admit, I poached from my lovely boyfriend who had bought it to make felted slippers for Christmas, not realizing that it's superwash. I love this color, which I had previously used to make a hat in Wool of the Andes a few years ago. I believe it's meant to mimic madelinetosh's Button Jar Blue. If I had the money to buy an large quantity of madelinetosh I might have a whole wardrobe in Button Jar Blue, I love it so.

I'm glad to kick off my 15 in 2015 with this project. I was feeling a bit bereft at the beginning of the year. I had started a hat which ended up having to be frogged. I knew as soon as I saw the 4 balls of Swish that it would make a great Oscilloscope shawl, but for some reason I was hunting for a different project. Nothing was really inspiring me at all. I thought my knitting mojo was in a funk due to all the Christmas knitting I had just finished. Then it just kind of struck me that what I really wanted to make was the shawl and denying myself from casting on was what was inhibiting my mojo. Honestly, I didn't think I'd finish it. I thought I would have to frog it, too, leaving me even more demoralized. As it stands though, I feel refreshed and ready to tackle some WIP projects I have lying around!