Phoenix Wing Shawl

My Phoenix Wing shawl (pattern: Eagle Twist) is FINALLY done. It only took about 3 months to knit, and most of that time was over the holidays. I worked on it a lot over the past few weeks to ensure that I got it done in time for Stitches West!

The pattern is fairly easy. I particularly like the cabled spine. However, there are a lot of short rows, which I didn't realize when I got the pattern; I hate short rows. But, I made the shawl anyways.

The pattern called for sport weight yarn, but I ended up using fingering weight -- Dreams in Color Smooshy with Cashmere. Consequently, I added one more short row section (with 6 short rows) to the shawl to give it more height & width, as I was afraid it was going to be more of a shawlette.

Boy, was I wrong. The rows kept taking longer and longer to finish. I actually worried that I would run out of yarn. My bind-off took at least an hour to complete. But, it felt GOOD to do do the last stitch on the bind off.

I was left with 10 grams of red and 14 grams of the gold yarn. While not cutting it "super close", it was getting down to the wire!

Of course, I found a problem once I washed it and laid it out to block. I had to tink back a couple of times on the bind-off to ensure a consistent tension, and apparently, during one of the tinks, a stitch had dropped.

DROPPED STITCH!!

I had a wet shawl that was already pinned to the blocking boards. I wasn't about to rip back and redo it. So after I had a small minor heart attack, I came up with a viable solution. I used a crochet hook to bring the dropped stitch back to where it should have been, then used some waste yarn from the skein and seamed it into the shawl. You can barely tell it's there.

Out of curiosity, I measured the wingspan of my Phoenix Shawl. I obviously didn't need to worry about length, as the wingspan is 82 inches!!!! The heigh is only 18 inches, but it's completely lovely to wear.

Because we're doing a Potter Craft-a-Long on the podcast, I'm dubbing this shawl as part of that CAL, since 

• a) it's Gryffindor colors, which apparently, is the House to which I belong
• b) I had already called this shawl, "Phoenix Wing", which ties into Fawkes (Dumbledore's Phoenix companion)
• c) Because I can :-)

I love the cabled "spine".

And, it wraps around me several times over. I can even tie it in the back to make a sontag, although, the back isn't quite long enough to be a full sontag.

So many ways to wear it.

I love it! And with a touch of cashmere, what's not to love?