Finally got through the tedious border pattern repeats, 37 times at 340 stitches per pattern repeat. The good news is I did memorize the pattern!
Next I had to pick up all the stitches on the inside straight edge of the border. There are 296 stitches to be picked up.
The first row transfers all 296 stitches on the bottom border to my size 2.25mm (US 2) needles, and while I was knitting I also added an additional 7 stitches to the shawl body to bring the body of the shawl up to the 303 stitches I need for the pattern I created on my excel spreadsheet on the computer.
I added a stitch marker before the first 17 stitches in the first section next to the border on the odd row side of the pattern (which becomes the right side of the fabric I’m creating), then a bunch stitch markers every 30 stitches for the middle of the shawl, and finally the last 16 stitches in the last section.
The even rows for the pattern are considered the back or “wrong” side of the fabric. To differentiate between the two sides of the fabric I used a blue stitch marker on the right side before the first 17 stitches. All of this set up will make sure I’m working on the right side of the pattern from my spreadsheet.
So now it’s just a lot of knitting, 624 rows plus a border at each end of the fabric, and a row of border stitches on each row I’m knitting. There are 39 border pattern repeats on each edge of the body, and each corner has it’s own border pattern repeat. All together it’s around 200,000 stitches. This is going to take at least several months. I’ll show pictures when I finish each 100 rows so I’m not boring people to death.
We looked at the garden today and there are some new seeds up which are teeny tiny and hard to tell which is a weed and which might be a spinach or a beet or a Swiss Chard. If the weather would warm up some, things would definitely put on some growth. There are even some peas peeking up!