Wavelettes Shawl

Janine le Cras has had a couple of patterns published in some of the major venues recently.  This pattern was published in Twist Collective, an online magazine that is one of my favorites.  I always buy several patterns from each issue.  The Spring 2013 issue came out while we were working on the Treasure Island Mystery Knit Along so some of us decided to do this shawl as a knit along while waiting for the next Unique Sheep Mystery Knit Along - Watership Down (as if we need any more projects).  Janine mentioned that she thought the shawl would be lovely in Pashmi and I thought it would look lovely in pastels so I picked the colorway above - White Queen's Castle.  I've been wanting to do something in this colorway for a while now.

The shawl is knit from the center out starting with a provisional cast on and at first I was going to knit it symmetrically, starting with the pink and working to the green.  Yesterday I wound the first skein into a ball and did a swatch, and while I was working with the yarn I decided that I wanted to knit it asymmetrically.  I am starting with skein 4 and will work the first half with skeins 4, 5 and 6 (in that order), then pick up the stitches from the provisional cast on using skein 3 and work the second half with skeins 3, 2 and 1 (in that order).  After deciding my course of action, I unraveled my swatch and used it to create the crochet chain for the provisional cast on.  Aren't the colors lovely?

Because I am not using the recommended yarn, and the 6 skein shawl set only comes with 1200 yards, I don't have the same amount of yarn that the pattern calls for.  Fortunately it is easy to adjust the pattern by doing fewer repeats of the body chart.  Before beginning I weighed my ball of yarn - 52 grams.  After working one repeat of the body chart I weighed my ball again - 44 grams.  So one repeat, for me, took 8 grams.  I then set up a spreadsheet to calculate how many stitches per gram I was getting and try to get an estimate for the yarn usage of the border chart.  I had to do some adjusting because the body chart has slipped stitches, which reduces the amount of yarn used.  I ended up coming up with 16 grams as an estimated yarn usage for one repeat of the border chart.

It them occurred to me this morning that I should wind all of my skeins into balls and weigh them as there is usually some variation in weight between skeins and I wanted to maximize my usage of the yarn.  It turns out that for my set, the skeins all weigh the same, so I don't have to do anything fancy, like use part of skein 3 for the first half of the shawl.  Based upon my calculations I am going to do 11 repeats of the body chart on each half (as opposed to the 12 called for in the pattern) and the 4 repeats of the body chart.

Pattern:  Wavelettes Shawl by Janine le Cras published in Twist Collective Spring 2013
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Pashmi in White Queen's Castle
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)