almost FO: Sunshine shawl

The Sunshine shawl is off the needles! Yay! It took me forever but the shawl is finally at a stage where I can see completion in its near future. All that's left is to weave in the ends, block the everloving hell out of it, and bring it over to its recipient.

I hemmed and hawed over how to finish this shawl as the instructions say nothing about an estimated length needed for the bind-off, so I kept weighing my leftover yarn and finally decided at about 8, 9 grams left that I needed to get going with the bind-off. In the end, I have so much yarn left, that I probably could have added another row or two... But oh well. Lesson learned for the future, I guess. Figure out how much yarn you need for the bind-off before you get to that stage!

It would have been nice if the designer had included something about that in the pattern, as it's marketed towards the absolute beginner in shawl-knitting and if the comments section on the pattern page is any indication, I'm not the first to have encountered this problem. However, from the look of things, this is actually never really mentioned in a pattern at all. I'm guessing it's because you can't really put a number down as a designer as it depends heavily on the yarn, your gauge, if you're a loose or tight knitter, and the type of bind-off.

The bind-off I used was the recommended picot bind-off. It's a fun little bind-off, the end result has a bit of a Fifties-feel to it. And it was surprisingly easy to do! The knitted cast-on threw me for a loop for a minute or so, and the first time I read through the instructions I was ready to bail on the idea and to just do a regular cast-off, but Youtube helped me through the instructions and after a cautious beginning (fiddly stitches on slippery needles, you know the drill), I motored through the bind-off and got it done far quicker than I had anticipated!

The blob of knitting doesn't look like much yet, and I do hope blocking it heavily will let it grow quite a bit still because as it is right now, I can hardly get it around my neck! It is supersoft, though. And I really hope the recipient will love it!