My Color Affection

I am knitting a shawl to a pattern called Color Affection (spelt that way, i.e. American fashion), by the Finnish designer Veera Välimäki.  It's a very popular pattern, with nearly 7000 projects in Ravelry.  I chose it because it's basically a very simple garter stitch pattern, but with some technically interesting aspects involving short rows (though I haven't got to those yet),  and you get to pick three colours of yarn that you would like to put together.  And because it's so cold just now, I like the idea of an extra light warm layer to wrap around me.

I'm knitting it in pure alpaca (Artesano Alpaca 4-ply, beautifully soft).  The colours are gray (don't know what that's called) with Poinsettia (a sort of soft red-pink-orange) and Demerara (a light toffee brown).  The last two colours have been discontinued, which is a pity, but I managed to find enough left by searching on-line.

I am almost at the point where the third colour (Demerara) is introduced.  That will be exciting, because I get to see what the three colours look like together in stripes, and the short rows start at that point so the overall shape gets more interesting.

I'm sure that I shall like the finished shawl, but in spite of being entirely garter stitch it's not actually fulfilling its intended role of being a straightforward piece of knitting that I can do while reading or watching TV.   It has to be knitted on a circular needle, because the rows get very long (they start off with only 3 stitches, but by now I've got more than 260 and eventually there will be 387).  On a circular needle, I am by now much faster knitting Continental style than English style, and knitting English style seems impossibly clumsy. But I can't knit Continental style without looking at what I'm doing.  (It's a bit like giving up sugar in coffee.  I remember that there comes a point where coffee tastes bad both with sugar and without.)   I'm choosing to knit fast and not look at anything else at the same time, i.e. Continental style.  I do need some TV knitting, though - I have several episodes of The Killing III saved up to watch, but I don't want to watch them without doing some knitting at the same time.  It will have to be something like plain stocking stitch on two needles, so that I can read the subtitles while knitting.