I know that I am long over due for a posting and that many of you are interested in just how Gretchen turned out. Wait no more… she is finished and blocked!

First, I want to say just how much I do love this pattern! No one section went on long enough to become tedious or boring. The instructions were clear and simple to follow (don’t over think anything on this pattern, Delia spells things out exactly and even though you might sit there and try to over think her instructions, don’t. Just do as the pattern says and I promise that you can knit this too!)

The original pattern calls for a silk yarn. I knit Gretchen in a lace weight merino yarn. My initial gut feeling that Gretchen was turning out a little on the small side was correct. Fully blocked, she is 44 inches, not 52 in the merino. Out of the 1760 yards, I had a total of 644 left over. (Merino is elastic, when you knit it stretches and then shrinks back, unlike fibers such as silk or cotton). Now, for those of you who do want to use a merino or other elastic fiber/wool, there are a couple of things that you can do to increase the size of the finished shawl.

You could go up one needle size, but this at best would only add maybe a few inches. The best thing to do to make Gretchen larger is to do a chart repeat on Chart D. When knitting Chart D, stop on row 35, then begin chart D again on row 5 and knit through the last row of the chart. This will add about 6 inches to the section (this would be 12 inches for the full width of the shawl if you are using merino like I did and should increase the final size to about 56 inches.) You should not have to do anything to the edging chart different than the instructions. When knitting it, I found it to be very elastic and ruffled.

I do plan on knitting Gretchen again. Probably a couple of times as it is such a fun and easy pattern to do! This one is destined to become a gift for one of Spurg’s nice co-workers who is expecting her third child. I think it will be perfect for a light weight heirloom baby blanket!

In other news, I finally finished the sample of my secret knitting last night. It is currently blocking and I am debating on whether I will dye the yarn myself for the full size version, or if I will have one of my many talented friends do that job for me. I am also debating as to what fiber I want to yarn to be.