Joji Locatelli's Expressive is a pretty shawl that looks like it's going to be a lot of work - and turns out to be even more. The body of the shawl is worked in twisted ribbing, with yarn over increases and decreases creating its lovely shape. It's not difficult to knit, but you have to look at your knitting at all times to catch the back loop of every other stitch. I couldn't read while knitting this and, as my attentive knitting time is limited, it took 11 months to finish.

If all that twisted ribbing isn't enough, the whole thing is finished with a bobble bind off that takes forever to work. It does give the shawl its nice look, so I persisted even if working it made me consider skipping the bobbles quite a few times.


If you have seen the original version, you might notice that my contrast edge looks wider than in the pattern. There are two reasons for this. First, I only had one skein of the main color, so my original plan was to use a third color for the bind off (the instructions say that you need three skeins). I kept going until I ran out of MC, and started the edge from there. It was actually only a few rows from instructed change of color anyway. Second, I kept going with my contrast color, thinking that I would knit all of it and then switch to my third color. At some point, I started counting my rows, and realised that I was already way pass the last row! But hey, who wouldn't want to do a couple of extra centimetres of twisted ribbing on 500 + stitches... I didn't want to go through the extra trouble of ripping back to where I was supposed to bind off, and as there was still enough yarn left, I simply stopped at that point and finished the shawl. Which took like a month or even more. But it's done now, and I have a lovely new shawl!

It's RUMS day.