Happy Friday!! I’m so excited to be able to share my finished Color Kaleidoscope shawl today!

I’m so happy with how this one turned out, it’s so big and cozy. The modular knitting looks really striking and I love the rows that are part brioche and part garter. I’m also really pleased I was able to use most of the yarn from stash/leftovers. This is a true variety of yarn, some single ply and some sock, and the only yarn I purchased specifically for it were the yellow and brown. I still do wish I had changed some of the color placements so there’s more contrast in some sections, but zooming out and looking at it it it looks really good! The shawl officially ended at the wavy striped section, but I added several rows of bonus border, I had plenty of yarn leftover, especially the yellow since that was a 100g skein.

I do love a Stephen West shawl for how relatively simple it is to create such a complex looking end product. Honestly, if you’re a day 1 knitter you can make this, especially with his YouTube videos. There’s a non-brioche option too if that’s a little intimidating. That being said, there were definitely large chunks of this shawl that I didn’t enjoy knitting. The more and more knitting I do, the more I realize I really love knitting for the meditative aspect. I love just zoning into a flow. This row had a LOT of short tiny rows where you had to count and turn frequently, and that really breaks up the flow for me. I enjoyed clues 2, 3, and the bonus border because I would much rather work on a 400 or 550+ stitch count row, even if it takes a long time to do that row or there’s complexity within it.

I was able to finish this shawl in just under 5 weeks. This is the second fastest I’ve ever finished a WestKnits MKAL, finishing one day faster than 2024’s shawl. Interestingly, this was the second smallest number of stitches for all the MKALs I’ve done, and it’s by far the smallest if you don’t include the bonus rows. Unsurprisingly, I can knit a lot faster when I’m not stage managing or in a show which I was during MKAL time in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 (lol). I know I’m a nerd but I love tracking this type of data! For a few years I was publishing my spreadsheet in the forums and letting people use, but that got exhausting after a time. I’m always happy to share with friends but it’s nice not to have to worry about

I’ll end with a photo of Wasabi helping me block the shawl this morning (she was sitting right on a blocking pin, the weirdo) and the giant pile of ends. I spent all my crafting time yesterday getting the ends woven in for preparation for this post!