The final clue has gone out, so now I can reveal my Oliver Twist shawl. This is my first time test knitting and it was a lot of fun. I was very flattered and honored when I was asked if I wanted to test knit the pattern. Before we even started knitting we looked over the pattern, finding the obvious errors and refining the directions. Before I knit each clue I compared the charts with the written directions making notes on any errors I found. I also weighed each skein before I started knitting and after each clue and after I had switched to the next skein. I made a spreadsheet with stitch counts and calculated yarn usage and figured out where the skein switches should occur. The yarn I picked is Jaded Jazzberry on Luxe. This is one of the ABC club colors and had just been released to the public when I was picking my color. I was really drawn to the jewel tones and the finished shawl is just gorgeous. I also had a lot of fun with beads. Ellen of Earthfaire always does a great job of picking out bead colors for The Unique Sheep Mystery Knit Alongs, but I had a lot of fun mixing and matching bead colors on this shawl. I have a pretty decent stash of size 6 beads, and I had done an order of beads from Ellen a little bit before I started this test knit, so I had some really good colors to work with. The one thing I did not have was enough to use the same bead color throughout the shawl. So I had fun.
The pattern has a lot of nupps and I'm really not a fan of nupps. I can knit them, and have, but I just don't like the way they look in a pattern, so I always replace them with beads. When I replaced the 4 nupp diamonds with beads I used a contrasting bead color that matched the later skeins - Gold-Lined Cranberry.
When I got to the 9 nupp diamonds I switched to a bead color that matched the earlier skeins - Dragonfly. Unfortunately I didn't have enough to do all of the 9 nupp diamonds in that color, so on the second set I replaced the center nupp with a Berry-Lined Light Topaz bead.
On the third set of 9 nupp diamonds I reversed the color scheme and used the Dragonfly bead in the center and the Berry-Lined Light Topaz beads for the rest of the diamond. I also used the Berry-Lined Light Topaz beads for the beads that were actually called for in the pattern in the final clue.
I was already getting a little tired of mystery knit alongs, so I am happy that I will be test knitting them for the Unique Sheep. The biggest reason I have gone off of the mystery knit alongs is that I like tweaking patterns and you just can't do that if you don't know the whole design. Sometimes a shawl design will strongly suggest a certain colorway to me, or will seem to be perfect for turning into a cape (like the Mayan Garden shawl, or the Liken shawl), and it is a lot harder to see those things and make those design decisions if you are only getting a little piece at a time.
Pattern: Oliver Twist by Janine le Cras
Yarn: The Unique Sheep Luxe in Jaded Jazzberry
Needle: US 5 (3.75 mm)
