Manta Shawl

Before my camera was all-the-way broken I captured a knitting project. Because it was a gift I couldn't share till the recipient had seen it; because this week has been so busy you get the post now.

It's a start-small-then-grow project as demonstrated by this practice swatch.

The real item was Lisa Shobhana Mason's "Manta Shawl" (but I shamelessly used stash yarn rather than ordering new.)


It gets a little tricky while building up from the point, what with yarn-overs and decreases that slant both ways:



Once past row 12, however, it becomes smooth sailing for the rest of the way through the yarn:



As the shawl grew I switched over to my two plastic circulars and damn, it really did look like a manta ray:





See?



That last picture was at about the 5/8 point, or more specifically "all but the last ball of yarn." I'm not sure I'll ever use the infinitely-increasing style of design again--rows that keep getting bigger and bigger get me down after a while. In spite of that it was still a soothing knit-up with all the garter stitch punctuated by that center rib.

Successfully managing those few (four every other row) yarn-overs with their associated decreases was the breakthrough act which led to the current Madeira Lace scarf project...that learning experience was the gift within the gift.