The Tunisian crochet cowl lived a very short life, I’m afraid. The curling didn’t get any better when it dried, so I ripped it back and cast on for a Passegiata instead. (Please excuse the cat shadow…it was all I could do to keep her off the shawl long enough to take the picture.)

If you’ve been here for a while, you know that I’m not usually interested in knitting from patterns, but there’s a lot going on in the background right now (some of it hard, all of it voluntary, much of it good), and I don’t have the bandwidth to design things from scratch at the moment. There’s some comfort in knitting a gauge swatch and just casting on, and it was either that or not knit for another month or two until things settle down.

The latter clearly wasn’t an option, and so to Ravelry I went, where I reveled in the amazing variety of projects available to knit. I went with something simple – a garter stitch crescent shawl with increasing stripe width. Doesn’t get much easier than that. True to form, I’ve made a couple of minor, unintentional “modifications” to the pattern (mostly having to do with not keeping track of stitch counts) but the design is forgiving enough that it doesn’t matter.

It’s good to have something on the needles again. I’m kind of amazed at how fast it is flying along, actually. Having a project that pulls me in and makes me want to keep going makes all of the difference.

I love how the colors are working in the shawl. Having the two yarns separate lets them play off of each other really nicely, and I’m actually liking the bright green undiluted. There’s enough variation in the dyeing to keep it interesting but not enough to pool, and I think I like the green yarn better balanced but not subdued by the teal.

Of course, the fact that the pattern is flying along means that I have a new problem. What to knit next? I will be out of knitting again in a couple of rows, and need to come up with something else to cast on. I thought about going back to Ravelry for a second round, but I think I might play with color/stripe variations on this same shawl design instead.

I did some digging in the stash, and came up with a few color combinations that would work.

Based on yarn quantities, I’m thinking that the purple set in the middle will be the next one to go. Depending on how much time I get to spend on knitting this afternoon, I may even cast on tonight. It’s nice to feel some forward momentum again!