Being as I’m working on knitting from stash, I had initially resisted immediately jumping on this bandwagon when it popped up on Ravelry a few weeks back:
What is this voodoo?! A Choose Your Own Adventure knit shawl by Ysolda Teague?! OH. MY. GOD.
I’ve never done a mystery knit along before, because a knit shawl is a lot of time, a lot of yardage & I have trust issues. (I’ll own it.) I love Ravelry for this reason: I can see a pattern, fall in love with the designer’s photos & then look at real pictures taken by real people of their real projects. You can learn if it doesn’t turn out like it should have or if there are glaring errors or if this only looks good on the model the designer knit it for. But with mystery knit-a-longs, all of those little security blanket squares get ripped out of your hot little hands.
Here is my rationalization for allowing myself to be drawn like a moth to wool on this issue:
- It’s Ysolda. She’s fantastic. And even if the shawl isn’t exactly my personal style, I’ll still have a beautiful, one-of-a-kind shawl that I might fall in love with even though it’s not my usual OR I’ll have a beautiful, one-of-a-kind shawl that I can give to a knit-worthy recipient in my life. One who will promise to hand-wash it only (or just give it back & ask me to wash & block it appropriately).
- It’s Ysolda. Her pattern aesthetic is consistently whimsical & beautiful. I’m pretty sure that of the 32 options in this pattern, one of them will speak to me.
- It’s only 700 yards – the commitment isn’t tiny, but it’s not an entire sweater either.
- I found yarn in my stash that will work. YAY!
- The pattern was around $5, after conversion from euros. And as others’ FOs pop up in Ravelry, I can use this pattern again & again, using the attributes I see & like, without knitting the same exact project 5 times. This is a huge deal!
Donita Westman 