Made: Nurmilintu scarf/shawl

I finished another knitted thing! After knitting a whole series of (very easy) cowls at the end of last year, back at the start of January I decided to cast on something a little bit more challenging. I picked this shawl/scarf called Nurmilintu (Ravelry link), a free, single skein fingering weight pattern mainly in garter stitch with three small bands of lace. I had previously bought a skein of Debbie Bliss Fine Donegal Tweed in the Midnight colourway intending to make socks. However, the extreme nobbliness of the yarn (not a technical term -- I have no idea what the technical term would be for how lumpy and irregular the yarn was) was not at all suited to knitting on toothpick sock needles, and I therefore repurposed the yarn to this shawl. I am not sure this pattern suits the nobbly yarn any better, actually, but I don't care, I like my finished product and as it's cashmere and wool, it's delightfully soft and cosy.

Lace pattern (observe my many, very obvious, mistakes!) and draped in shawl fashion on Flossie

There were a ton of new things I had to learn as I worked through this pattern: reading a lace pattern chart (very badly, I had to rip back the first lace panel three times), knitting the various lace stitches, including one that was new to me (also badly, so the first two lace panels have SO MANY mistakes in them. I think I got the third and final panel all correct, go me), and the fun bobbly edged cast off at the end. I also had to block the scarf, which was an interesting experience. I've blocked socks, but all I do with that is wash them and then stretch them over a vaguely foot shaped form I made from a coat hanger. Blocking this involved spraying and stretching and pinning and all sorts.

Unblocked lace pattern (also you can see the multicoloured yarn flecks best in this shot)

I made one minor change to the pattern as written, and really just because I hate scrap yarn. The pattern is written that you finish the scarf after the third lace panel. I have to admit I wasn't 100% sold on this anyway, though if my yarn had worked out that way I would have followed the pattern. However, when I got to the end of the pattern as written I had fully ~18g left of my yarn of a 100g skein, and that just seemed wasteful. I added a final half width panel of the garter stitch and finished up with just a tiny 3g ball of yarn left over at the end, and I think I actually prefer how this looks overall.

I'm not really sure how you WEAR one of these weirdly shaped shawl things. This was my best estimate!

I've already cast on not one but TWO new knitting projects. The first is another fingering weight scarf (Ravelry link) in a pattern best described as "utterly mindless" -- endless stocking stitch. It's a very portable project, and thus useful for travelling/hospital appointment waiting rooms and also perfect for mindless knitting-while-watching-TV. If I pick this up and put it down as much as I expect to, it'll probably take a good long time to finish.

The second project is a sweater (Ravelry). I know, I know, I swore off knitting sweaters after the Purple Monstrosity Disaster! But I have this goal for working my way through my yarn stash and this huge pile of aran yarn that I don't know what to use for if I don't make actual knitwear, and I found this sweater pattern that I thought would make an actually easy casual aran weight sweater and... yeah, I don't know, it will probably end just as badly as the last sweater I made. Further updates from the field to follow, please feel free to make O.o eyes at me when it all goes wrong. /o\