Shawl? What shawl?

I'm going to just admit it right now.

I knit shawls. Despite my many claims otherwise, it's time to just accept it.

Pattern: Olympic National Park shawl
Needles: US 7
Yarn: Superwash Merino/Mulberry Silk blend (bought off Etsy)
Mods: Only 1. The picot edge is done with 2 stitches. I worked mine with 3.
Start date: July 19
Finish date: August 29
Blocked dimensions: 41"x17" (vs. the patterns 39x16)

I have no idea why this took me over a month. It wasn't for lack of knitting time. It's an easy pattern. For some reason though, I had many a set back with it. In the end it didn't matter because it turned out better than I had hoped for. The picot edge was new for me. It's fiddly and time intensive but so worth it. So, so worth it.

 The tree trunks and stems are neat. A combination of twisted stitches (not to be confused with stitches knit through the back) and cables they just flow naturally. The first few inches can be hard to see but once things start to split and become more than the trunk it becomes rather intuitive.

 The leaves are just are easy to read once you get past the first one or two. I was sure that they'd be a pain in the butt based on the fact that I had to restart this 3 or 4 times (not sure why...it wasn't hard) but I was happily surprised to see it wasn't.

 I'm not a fan of how the pattern was written out. It's formatted to be printed and while that is handy I think it's limiting. The charts are large with each one on it's own page (i.e. left side of the first chart is on a separate page from the right side) so there is a lot of scrolling back and forth if you read it from your computer. The chart legend is also on a separate page so if you forget something you have to go all the way to the top.

There are written instructions as well and I used those hoping to circumvent the scrolling issue. It worked BUT you have to read the written instructions similar to a chart. Odd numbered rows are left to right and even numbered rows are right to left. They are not written out that way though. Once I got the hang of it (it helped to highlight each row in each section as I went) it's irritating to have to zig zag back and forth across a pattern like that. It's an odd complaint because it's not a real complaint. The pattern is easy and intuitive. The hardest part about it is figuring out how you want to read it. That's not all that bad really.

Already on the needles: Cladonia. First 7 rows done and now that this is finished, I can work on it without guilt. Win-win.