Scorpius

When I finished up the Mayan Garden Cape I thought about starting Peter Pan, but I really want to wait until the complete pattern comes out so I don't have to import all of the clues into KnitCompanion.  Then the latest shipment from the Zodiac Shawl Club came and I decided I really needed to work on those so I pulled out Scorpius.  This one presents a little bit of a challenge because of the construction (so does Peter Pan, but I have a plan for that one).  This is one of those shawls that is knit from the center out.  Well, not quite the center.  The first chart forms the center panel, and then you work charts 2, 3 and 4 before going back to the cast on edge (provisionally cast on) and work charts 2, 3 and 4 again.

My first issue with the construction is the fact that the yarn is variegated and if I just work the pattern as written the yarn colors may not look right - there might be an obvious break where I start the second part of the shawl.  The second issue with the construction is the provisional cast on.  I'm just not a fan of those, especially the ones where you use a crochet chain to pick up the stitches and then unravel the crochet chain to get the other side.  I learned on the Wavelettes shawl what a pain that can be.  Originally I thought I would just do a long tail cast on and pick up stitches from that for the other side.  I figured that with fingering weight yarn the ridge formed by the cast on wouldn't be too noticeable.  I even started the shawl out that way and worked a few rows of the pattern, and as I worked them a plan started to form.

I frogged that first start and took my scale and my cake of yarn downstairs to my studio and put the yarn cake on the scale and started winding another cake from it using my left hand to tension the yarn and my right hand to wind.  When I had wound off half of the cake I grabbed another US 4 needle out of my needle stash and headed back upstairs.  Then, starting in the middle of the skein and holding the two needles together I cast on 77 stitches using Judy Becker's magic cast on that was invented for toe up socks.  And then I started knitting.  I have knitted rows 1-20 of the first chart in both directions and now I'll knit rows 9-20 of the first chart 3 times on each side, instead of 6 times, finishing off with rows 21-28.  It will make the central motif a little bit bigger, but I have a very generous skein so I'm not worried about running out of yarn.  The picture is not the best - it has been a gray and rainy day.

Project:  Scorpius by Trish vanKuyk
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in Scorpio
Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)