Twists and Turns started… and then paused

As I mentioned in my monthly goals post, I got sucked into trying the Stephen West mystery knit-along (MKAL) this year. I was avoiding it like a sane person because I am in the middle of moving and don’t have a ton of knitting time, but I caved at the last minute. Part of what was helping me avoid it was that I didn’t have enough of the same yarn for the main and contrast colors. Then just before the MKAL started, Knit Picks had a sale that let me get the entire shawl’s worth of yarn for about the cost of one skein of indie dyed yarn.

As it turns out, I was probably better off skipping this year. I try not to be too negative in this space, but this pattern is just not doing it for me. It has been a month and I am still on clue 1. This section looks really interesting, but it requires binding off a bunch of stitches and casting back on again every four rows. It is exhausting! I was getting demoralized as more clues kept coming out and I was nowhere near caught up. Once the last clue was released I peeked at the finished shawl to see if it would motivate me to keep going. Instead I realized that the pattern is probably not something I would enjoy wearing.

Now this project is going to sit in time out for a little while. I don’t want to frog it just yet (not least because unpicking all those bind-off rows will be painful). It can stay paused while I decide if I want to pick it back up again. I think some of the techniques in this pattern could be really fun to learn, but there is an awful lot of knitting left to do for something I will likely end up giving away.

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