janestarz | Kettle Valley -- Zaphira's Shawl -- finished

What a good pattern will do for you? Make a six month grueling ordeal full of doubt worth frogging. And then re-knit it in 2 weeks to create a beautiful, perfect shawl.

As Eisirt is still away for his roleplay campaign I had to use the gorillapod and some storage bins and the timer on my SLR which is too heavy for the tiny gorillapod. I was also taking photos of a sock project and completely forgot I had stashed the fifth needle behind my ear, as I am known to do on occasion. Well, at least it's a characteristic photo of me!

Because I blocked it 'standing up', the hem looks a bit wonky....

Even though it's not the best of pictures (no zoom and slightly out of focus because of the timer, I had no one that could stand in at the right distance) you can very clearly see the wonderful textures of this shawl. The stockinette with garter stitch zebra stripes, followed by a moss stitch panel, the beautiful vertical lines in the garter panel that flow seamlessly into the red cabled diamonds. Gorgeous use of texture!

This pattern costs all of 6 euro and despite not having any charts it was a fun and easy knit. It takes a bit of reading to see what they want you to do, but it's pretty straightforward and writing a chart for a pattern like this can be tricky! There's 6 increases per 2 rows, so that throws everything off in your chart.
Can you believe there's only 55 people on Ravelry who have made this pattern to date? Incredible!
I used 680 meters of worsted weight yarn for this humongous shawl that will keep me very cosy during Emphebion. And the best part is that both the dark blue and the red are slightly less than one full skein at my gauge, so it's pretty economical (no innocent half-eaten skeins!). It's quite gorgeous in a single colour with long fringes as well.

Pictures in costume to follow before the New Year, I hope!
Ravelry project with all the details is here.