Happy Friday everyone! I’m so excited to be showing off my finished WestKnits MKAL, Go Go Dynamo! I absolutely love how this one turned out. The colors work so well together and it’s a great size. For my MC (the blue), I used Fiber Optic Kashmir in the colorway “Nevermore,” and the CC is some Laine And Lotus (sadly no longer dyeing). I’m so glad I was able to use some stash yarn for this! I did go up two sizes to US 6 (4.0 mm) needle, and I’m glad I did because I love the drape this has got.

The process of knitting this was very fun, I was able to finish it in 5 weeks. I didn’t do the optional wavy border because I was running very low on MC yardage. Picking up all those stitches along the bottom wouldn’t have been worth it for just one or two extra rows. The bottom “scalloped” section was the only part of this that I found pretty tedious. I think it’s because it took me more than a week to get through due to limited knitting time. Plus, I had to count to pay attention to the short rows and the small number of stitches made it a bit annoying to work on. I tend to like larger swatches of knitting so I can zone out or read. Otherwise the construction on this was so fun, there was modular knitting and picking up stitches so the max number of stitches in a row (without the border) was only 409. The perfect balance for me of longer rows to allow me chill time but not so long that you could only do a few a day and not see progress. One of the things I really like about the shawl is how the motifs increase in size from top down, from the small slip stitch triangles at the top, to the medium stripes, bubbles and brioche in the middle, to the large scallop type shapes at the bottom. This one will definitely get a lot of wear, and I even inspired my friend to make one.

Something I love about knitting is that we get to say “it’s done.” We finish the knitting, bind it off, give it a wash, and get to wear or use the thing we made. It stinks that so many things in life aren’t like that, and progress can be slow and appear impossible. Like the results of this election this week. I’m certainly not suggesting that we would have been “done” with progress had Harris been elected, but it feels like there’s going to be so much work and fight to keep making progress on a more just country, and that we just took a big step backward. I’m disappointed and scared for myself and so many of my friends who lives and rights have the potential to be affected negatively by policies put in place by the next administration. But I’m just trying to hold close to the ones I love and trust that there are good people in the world who want to do good things. Hope everyone else who may feel this way is taking care of themselves this week. 💙