Reciprocate Shawl Progress

Romi Hill’s Reciprocate Shawl is an interesting project – lots of  variety to hold my attention. The pattern has several “hacks” so it can be made different ways and Romi encourages us to try our own hacks. I’ve hit a few bumps along the way and despite hitting the panic button a few times, everything has been an easy fix and I’m moving right along. My plan was to finish this by July 1 but that may not happen and I’ll explain why.

In the beginning, I had planned to do hack #2, which is the light gray, dark gray, red version if you’re looking at the pattern on Ravelry. The more I looked at the design, and since I’m using fingering weight instead of worsted, I decided to go with the light gray, dark gray and lime green version. The pattern calls for one skein of each yarn and the the skeins recommended are 420 yards each.

In my stash I found the above three skeins of Miss Babs’ Hot Shot, which I love. I love the roundness and fairly tight twist of Hot Shot. I also loved those three colors together. I had one skein of each and these skeins are 400 yards. Since I’m a fairly loose knitter, there was a faint thought that I might run out of yarn.

First Bump: I weighed all the yarns before beginning and was weighing each skein along the way and I wasn’t far into the first step, using the yarn on the left (Deer Moss) when I realized I was not going to have enough yarn to finish. I was able to order another skein of Deer Moss and only used about 30 yards of it so, had I knitted just a bit tighter and started with a 420 yard skein, as suggested, I would not have run out of yarn. Since I was able to get another skein, this wasn’t a serious bump in the road.

Second Bump: After finishing Chart D, Repeat #2, I had done two repeats using the middle yarn (Preoccupations) and had 45 grams left. I began with 113 grams so I had used well over half of this skein and still had two repeats left to go and the repeats get larger as I proceed so . . I was going to run out of this yarn too.

Third Bump: The Preoccupations colorway is no longer available to I had to figure out a new plan. I could either stop after the second repeat of Chart D or I could add a fourth color.

After going through quite a few options, I decided to add the color on the right, Sea Turtle, in place of Preoccupations for the third and fourth repeats of  Chart D. That yarn has not arrived yet so I’m hoping it works as well as I think it will.

Fourth Bump: I started with 113 grams of Squash Blossom. After finishing the first repeat in which Squash Blossom was used, I had used 26 grams. Following the pattern, I would use Squash Blossom two more times, plus the garter ridge border, plus a stretchy bindoff.  Each repeat gets larger. My guess was that two more repeats using Squash Blossom would use up the entire skein since each repeat gets bigger. That would leave not enough yarn for the border and bind off. I had already tried to order more Squash Blossom and Miss Babs was out but late yesterday, I saw a note that they had dyed up more so I ordered another skein of that.

Whew . . that took a lot of thought . . really! The Sea Turtle will probably not arrive til Friday so I’m going to miss my target finish date of July 1. There are plenty of other projects I can work on so I won’t be looking for something to do.

This morning when I checked my email, I had a note from a friend that she has Preoccupations and only needs about half the skein so she’s going to send me half of her skein. How sweet. All that planning and worrying and it looks like I may end up with enough yarn to make it to the end with my original plan. Funny how that worked out.

By the time I got toward the end of the second repeat of Chart D, each row was taking me 30 minutes. Each repeat is 24 rows so I’m figuring that as of right now, I have at least 22 hours left, not counting the bind off. Even not counting that I’m waiting on the Sea Turtle yarn to arrive, I would have to knit about 6 hours a day in order to finish by July 1 and I doubt I even get in half that much knitting time each day.

So . . it will be finished when it’s finished but I think it’s going to be gorgeous when it is finished.