Daybreak Shawl (Scarf)

Here it is, the 12th - 12 shawls in 2012 post!  I thought it would be appropriate to share Keith's "Shawl (I suppose when making a shawl for a man it is more kind to call it a scarf) on his 29th birthday.  Happy Birthday, Keith!  I selected the Daybreak Shawl by Stephan West in size Small for Keith.

Palette (1 ball each) of Mongoose (A; 33g consumed) and Verdant Heather (B; 49 g consumed).  I love the way the mongoose plays off of the brown heather flecks in the green.  I checked the color combo with Keith before I started knitting and he approved of it, too.  Even though this was to be his Christmas present, I had shown him the pattern months before I decided to start knitting it for him to see if he thought it were appropriate for a man.  (The shawls was designed to be unisex BY a man, but I still needed to double check that Keith would approve of it!)

I have never successfully done a garter stitch tab before.  It was easier to do this time because I was using size 4 needles with palette yarn rather than size 7.  In the past I've just CO 7 sts and then knit a second row. You really cannot tell if you didn't know what you were looking for...  But in the spirit of trying new things, I decided to suck it up and give it a go this time.

Notes from the constructions:

• Section 1 - for 133 sts, 66 sts-center-66 sts.
  
  
• I decided to do 13 stripes rather than 12. I have plenty of yarn (50 g remain after 12 stripes completed) and I wanted the scarf to be a tad bit bigger.
  
  
• I stopped counting stitches, I figured that if I missed a M1 it wouldn't be too big of a deal.  
• 46 g remain after 13 stripes.
• I used a stretchy bind off (K1, K2tog-tbl)

The unblocked shawl

This pattern is superbly written and clear to follow.  It was a huge pleasure to knit, I just couldn't put it down!  I know that I will make another one of these in the future.

How I might have blocked the shawl if I were making it for a woman.

Blocking a straight edge was pretty difficult for me.  I cannot wait to get my hands on some blocking wires, they would help me make a straighter edge.  

I wish I had done the Color Affection YO trick with the edge so I could have blocked it bigger.  The reason why I hadn't needed to do this in other sideways shawls is that they were either knit on larger needles to begin with or had a YO after the edge for the increase.  YO's add more yarn to the row when you are making a stitch, M1R/L reduce the width of the previous row a bit.