Presenting my first shawl: Grainwise. It is a beautifully written pattern. Bernice aka Yamagara wrote about the name being inspired by the way the colour in the yarn is showcased by each grain or stitch. This and the sample/test knits inspired my yarn choice: a lace weight silk yarn that was waiting for the perfect project to shine. I thought it would be lovely next to skin, around the neck which might be more sensitive towards any other materials. The subtle colour variation in this yarn is shown off very nicely with the asymmetrical blocks of alternating texture.

My swatch was simply the first 3 layers of the shawl, because it was small enough to be a swatch, and presented all the textures that would be present in the shawl, so I could check that I enjoyed the look of the present gauge. Indeed, the first few swatches I made were with needles that were too large for my yarn choice, which made for gaps in some of the stitch patterns.

My favourite thing about this pattern is being able to use up almost all of my single skein of special yarn with minimal wastage. I'll provide details on how much yarn each layer used, so it will help you with using up as much as possible.

• After layer 18: 57g of yarn remaining.

• After layer 19: 53g of yarn remaining.

• After layer 20: 49g of yarn remaining.

• After layer 21: 44g of yarn remaining.

• After layer 22 (last layer): 40g of yarn remaining

I proceeded to the garter section, by the end of which I had 8g of yarn remaining. I probably could have gotten away with knitting one more layer before the garter section.

It was lovely to only have 2 ends to weave in--one at the start, one at the end. When I was done, there was barely any weaving in and I had my finished product!

The only thing I didn’t like was how the shawl ended. I wanted it to end on a point instead of bluntly across a row of stitches. I made up my own extra few rows for the point of the shawl.