Sorry it has been a while. Life and all that…
Anyway, I’m here now because I’ve been knitting on a very, very old project, and I thought you might like to hear about it.
Way back in the mists of time, I was the technical editor on The Knitter magazine. I worked there for two years, before leaving to start my freelance technical editing business. While I worked on the magazine I dipped my toe into writing knitting patterns and designing for the first time. In June 2010 my Golden Wheat Shawl was published in issue 20 of The Knitter. It was my eighth design and to this day remains the one that I am most proud of.
Image © The Knitter Magazine
Because I was working full time on the magazine, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to knit the pattern sample myself, so I was very lucky to have an extremely talented lace knitting friend, Kim Hobley, who knitted the sample. I passed her the sections of the pattern as we went – not unlike a mystery knitalong! She did an amazing job, but I always felt that to really own the design, I needed to knit it for myself.
I duly purchased three skeins of beautiful laceweight yarn from the now closed Old Maiden Aunt Yarns, and cast on. The date was 31st July 2010.
Progress on the shawl was slow. I was working on lots of projects and it wasn’t often my top priority. Looking back on my Ravelry page for the project I can see that I worked on it quite a bit in 2011 and again in 2016 when I finally completed the centre lace square.
It then lay dormant for a long time… my blog archives here tell me that I started work on it again in July 2021, and at that point I decided it was time to wind the second skein of yarn. I’m sure you can guess what happened next…
Yup. It went back into a project bag and was rudely ignored for more than two years. Poor Golden Wheat! It has been so neglected over the years!
However, I’m writing about it today because I picked it back up at the end of September. I have one other unfinished project on my needles that is very close to done (some mittens that need final decreases and thumbs), and I decided that until I’ve finished my Golden Wheat Shawl, I’m not going to cast on anything new. I’m not feeling hugely motivated by casting on at the moment as I don’t really need any new knitwear, so that will help, but I am also absolutely determined that this is the year I finish my shawl.
I have foolishly worked out some stats on the project. I was hoping they would encourage me along, but now I think it might have been better not to know! But they may amuse you, and perhaps you’ll encourage me along instead?
I am currently working on round 51 of the border chart which has 72 rounds in total. This means that I have 1,176 stitches on my needles. Ouf!
The central lace panel consists of around 73,500 stitches. These are all done!
The two plain rounds plus 72 round border is 81,400 stitches and includes 584 nupps (stitches consisting of knitting 5 times into one stitch and then knitting those 5 together on the next round – fiddly). I have done 56,100 or so of those stitches. Whoot!
There are 160 repeats of the edging pattern, each including 14 nupps. That is a total of 43,360 stitches and 2,240 nupps. I’m pretty sure I will never want to see another nupp again by the end of it!!!
I have already knitted 129,600 or so stitches, and I have 68,660 left to go. So although I’m well over half way through the border, there is still a lot to be done.
I’m not looking forward to all the edging nupps. But I do remain committed to getting this thing done. Two thirds down, one to go!
Onwards!