Catch up

We've been out of town, in a rather Luddite-like scenario, so I have been unable to post. My poor husband has been in desperate need of a vacation, so the break was nice...even though he ended up working some percentage of 3 of the days. Looking mighty relaxed, eh? Great news for me was finishing the center square and moving on to the borders on my Shetland Shawl. I did get a bunch of knitting time! Here is my planning-the-borders mess:


... Which I worked on during our vacation. I have found more of the yarn, thru another knitter on Ravelry, so I should be able to finish this thing soon! Here's the idea.
I knit the center square:

This is unblocked so it's not as open as it will be once blocked, but it shows some of the center square. Here's a bit more detail:
With the large center square done, I picked up stitches all the way around the square (stitches ready and waiting on two sides: the edge where I finished the last row, and the start with its provisional caston). I am now knitting around and around the outside of the square, increasing 2 stitches at each corner on every other round. Thus every other round I have 8 more stitches to incorporate in the border's pattern. That's one reason for all the graph paper in the picture of my planning...

I am afraid the knitting itself is a crumpled mass on my circular needle and hard to appreciate right now, so no pictures of that today. I do want to say that technically most Shetland shawls have been done in garter stitch based lace. Obviously, going around in a circle (OK, square) knitting is going to produce stockinette. A purist might leave a seam to sew and purl back. I guess I'm not a purist! I wanted to go around the outside edge to make each of the four sections of border identical and to avoid seams. Am curious to see how the St. Stitch looks but have to wait till it's less crumpled. More tomorrow, I hope.