WIP Wednesday: Follow Your Arrow 2

I decided to participate in the Follow Your Arrow 2 Mystery Knit a long (MKAL). It's a mystery KAL which means no one aside from the designer knows how the shawl will look in advance. It's also a choose your own adventure type. There are five clues total and one clue is released per week. Each clue will contain two options and you pick one option and knit it. The first clue was released on Monday.

I actually found it surprising that this is my first Ysolda pattern, she is a pretty well known designer in the knitting community and I do appreciate her aesthetic. For this KAL, I chose to knit Clue 1B. I didn't understand her cast on instructions and was too lazy to look it up. So I decided to do something not in the pattern. I ended up doing the garter tab cast on. I looked at the pattern and noted that I need 11 stitches in order to start the first row. Using that information, I cast on 5 stitches and knit 6 rows. Then I turned my work sideways and picked up three stitches (in each ridge). I turned my work and knit across all 8 stitches and then I picked up another three stitches on the other side. So now I had 11 stitches and was ready to start the first row. This worked out well for me and seemed more straightforward than the instructions.

I also didn't understand her increase "make 1" instructions. I tried to do it the way that she recommended in the pattern, but I ended up with a hot mess. I somehow ended up with crazy gaping holes and it did not look right in any way. So I re-started and tried to re-do them a few times. In the end, I decided to just do my increases the way I know how to. So I'm doing knit into front and back of the same stitch for all my increases. So far it's working out and looking good.

My last complaint is I'm having to check my work often because she made the wrong side rows odd and the right side rows even. This keeps throwing me off. I'm used to having my odd rows be right side and my even rows be wrong side.

Aside from all my confusion and complaints, I am very much enjoying the yarn I picked out for this project and I'm liking how the pattern looks so far. I think beginnings of shawls can just be fiddly at times, so I'm hoping that once it's more established it will be easier to see what I'm doing and the pattern will be more intuitive.