The manta ray shawl got bigger and bigger and stripier and stripier, and then it sprouted a frilly conjoined twin.
This is what it looked like at the end of clue 1:
Clue 2 was initially perplexing. (Perplexity is both a bug and a feature of mystery knit-alongs.) It requires the knitter to knit halfway across the existing work and then cast on 345 additional stitches. At first I thought we were knitting a giant ruffly edge for the existing square, but then it dawned on me: we are knitting an attached adjacent square, building it from the outside in.
I'm still repeating my mantra: you buy the MKAL ticket, you take the MKAL ride. The first chunk of the square is chevron-patterned; the designer likes chevrons more than I do. I think they have a pretty strong 70s afghan vibe. "Knitters have been using chevrons for generations," I am telling myself. "Be open-minded."
Another thing that's distinctive about MKALs is that you get the pattern in pieces, so you may need to look at more than one file if you're searching for a particular detail. I did not review the introduction to the first clue before I started the second one. "Color A," I said to myself. "That's the light one." Three thousand stitches later, I realized that color A is actually the dark one. My chevrons have a bit of an Easter egg feel:
But you know, I'm not going to fret. I like all of these colors, and an MKAL is always an exercise in relinquishing control and accepting surprises, and no one will ever say, "Huh, I think you were supposed to put the deep blue-green on the outside of your big square and the aqua in the middle, but you did it backwards."
I knit much less than I used to, and I am really enjoying the hands-busy-mind-free contemplative facet of this project. It is going to take me a long time to knit a 20-inch square in fingering-weight yarn, but I'm looking forward to it. I'll post a picture of the two squares side by side when this second one is a little less scrunched up on the needles.
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