Here are some shawl updates. An overall shot showing as much as I could get into the frame, although the perspective is kinda weird:

Here’s one that shows most of the completed center square, but it doesn’t show the beginning of the border along one edge:

Here’s one end of the first border section. It’s being done one edge at a time, but there’ll be no sewing; the 2nd, 3rd and 4th edges are attached to previous edges as they’re worked.

The original “Stonington Shawl” pattern, upon which this is based, calls for a traditional edging knitted on around the entire edge of the shawl after all four border sections are completed. I don’t have time for that. This needs to be ready in about a week and a half. I’ll be knitting in a little bit of a lacy pattern of some sort in the last dozen or so rows of each border section, so it can have an “edging” without the extra (time-consuming) step.

Another thing different I’m doing is putting yarn-overs along the edges for easy pickup. Notice how stitches picked up in yarn-over edges look almost exactly like a regular row of eyelets:

Since the center square was knitted corner-to-corner, for the first half of the square the yarn-overs were my increases, one at the beginning of each row. Obviously, once I got to the mid-point, I had to start decreasing. Normally, I’d have done a K2tog or SSK at the beginning of each row; but since I also wanted to add a yarn-over at the beginning of each row — while still decreasing — my decrease was K3tog, right after the beginning yarn-over, every row, until I had 1 yo and 1 stitch left. At that point I began picking up up along one edge for a border section. This first border, I’m doing yo, k2tog, yo at the beginning of each row. The k2tog compensates for the first yo, and the second yo is my increase, so the border widens as I go, to form mitred corners.

Gotta hustle on this thing now!