I've been knitting along in the evenings, and sometimes during my little afternoon break, and the two-colour shawl is progressing nicely:

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Renaissance Shawl, Chart E finished once.


It's a beautiful knit, with a really well-written pattern, and I can memorise the sequences well enough to knit in front of the TV (if it's not too distracting, that is).  There's a second round of the chart E to go according to the pattern, and I will add at least another repeat if not even two for some extra length. I have more than enough yarn for that, and I'm not planning to block it very hard - I want the shawl to be cosy and warm, not lacy and airy. Hence also the sock wool, I do plan to really wear it!

I'm moderately happy with the place that I switched colours in; I could have done it a few rows earlier, in retrospective, that might have been even nicer. But it's non-obvious enough that I am basically switching colours inside a pattern, so I don't mind enough to rip back and re-knit.

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Detail of the colour change part - a few rows earlier would have been even nicer...


One of the fun things of lace knitting for me, by the way, is figuring out the return rows. In this pattern, you're supposed to work back in pattern (that is knit all knit stitches and purl all purls), and Anne-Lise writes out the sequence in the pattern to help.

However... I am both lazy and a Combination knitter. Which means that, when I purl back, my stitches are aligned the other way around on the needle - instead of having the right leg of the stitch in front as would be the standard Western way, they have the left leg in front. This is no issue at all if you just knit into the stitch, or purl into it on the next row - you just stick your needle into it the right way, and your stitch will be untwisted and totally normal. It's also a non-issue if you do a standard ssk left-leaning decrease - you don't even need to slip the stitches, as they are already aligned correctly for the decrease. Just stick the needle in and knit both stitches at once.

Where it does become an issue, though, is for the k2tog (or kxtog) decrease. With the standard right-leg-in-front alignment, you just knit both (or x) stitches together. If the alignment is wrong, though, you need to re-align the stitches by slipping them individually and then re-transfer them to the left needle so you can work them together. Or you knit one, re-transfer it to the left needle and slip the other stitch (or x-1 stitches) over the knit one before re-transferring it back to the right.

All these maneuvers tend to annoy me, probably much more than they should. So what I do, instead, is work out where I have kxtog decreases coming up in the next right-side row... and when I'm working the row before that, I do a standard Western purl stitch there and only there. So my pattern sheets now have a lot of pencilled-in notes that look like this: P1, p3, k2, p7, k2, P2, p5, ... where the P with upper case means "do an awkward standard purl" and the lower case means "do the Combined knitting purl".

And this, I can tell you, is fun. At least for me. Because, one, the return row is less boring, and two, there is no re-alignment to be done for any of the decreases, which makes me feel extra-clever and pleases me no end...