February Personal Stash Yarn Challenge – Herald

I’m going to work this yarn in a gradient from pink to the black and then back out so both halves will look the same in the end.

2/22 – Total change of plans. After downloading the hat pattern, I just couldn’t get excited about it. I do not love that style of hat and while I think it would have looked cool in this yarn, I know I wouldn’t have worn it and I don’t know anyone in my knit-gifting life who would have liked the pink.

As I’ve been in a big scarfy-shawl kind of mode lately, I decided to look for a project in that vein. My first thought was to just do my own elongated triangular shawl recipe. which would have been fine because I can vamp on that as I go and add various elements. But I really just wanted to use a pattern that I wouldn’t have to think about.

I searched for sideways/end-to-end shawls, something that would let me use all of my yarn, and there are several out there that would have worked. But many involve very intricate (albeit beautiful) lace or other stitch motifs, which while I would probably enjoy doing, weren’t what I needed right now because I don’t want to be glued to a pattern or charts. Maybe that sounds boring, but I really want the yarn to do the work. Those are some of my favorite projects, tbh.

So then I found this Herald pattern, and it is just right. While I don’t usually love mesh lace, the fact that there are only two rows of mesh alternated with two garter ridges throughout makes this entirely mindless to work on while not being boring, and the colors of the yarn will keep it interesting as I go from the pink to the balls that become darker and darker as more strands of black are added. The outer edge will then be the solid black.

I started it last night and just got to my second ball this morning. Really happy with it so far! I’m not 100% loving the yarn though…it’s very “string” like…it doesn’t have much bounce at all, and it’s fairly splitty, which is slowing things down. I’m currently using my Lykke interchangeables, but I might switch to some HiyaHiya metal needles and see if that helps, or something pointier if I have it, like ChaiGoo…not sure if I have those in a 6 on a long cable. TBD.

2/27 – Finished! As it turned out, I never did switch needles. The splitty issue mainly happened on the YO K2tog rows, which were only two out of the eight in the repeat, so I just dealt with it.

I ended up doing a couple fewer repeats than the pattern called for before I ran out of yarn, but I was happy to have enough of the final mini (the black) to finish with the lace part of the motif and then bind off. I did check to make sure I had a back up of black sock yarn in case I needed it (I did…some WYS 4-ply), but I had enough to not have to play yarn chicken, so, win!

I love how the colors worked through this, and I also love that all of the dark marling hides my mistakes well. LOL It looks like a hot mess at the moment though, as lace usually does when it’s first off the needles, but I have high hopes that it’ll look much better once I block it.