Note: top photo is colour-true for the green, fourth photo from top is most colour-true for the purple (on my monitor, anyway)

I confess I found the two-colour section crazy-making at first because I figured mosaic is mosaic and thought I must be doing something wrong when I found that I was slipping stitches that were the same colour as the row’s working yarn. Once I figured out that these extended stitches alongside their shorter same-colour counterparts were actually creating part of the pattern that became much easier to adjust to. The other crazy-maker was the colouring of chart D-alternate (which, with the same-colour slipping issue, I was finding was the better of the D charts for me to follow to make sure I didn’t start knitting same-colour stitches I should slip ) … in many places on it a slipped stitch is shown magically changing from main colour to contrast colour or vice-versa by the mere act of being slipped, which makes it difficult to read one’s stitches to check against the chart in some rows … the colour of stitch shown on the chart is not necessarily the colour it really is on the needles. I found it easier on the brain to just tune out the colour-coding on every square with a slipped stitch symbol and focus JUST on the symbols … as long as the working yarn is the correct colour for that row, the pattern does work.

Finished the solid purple and mosaic sections with 5 grams of the purple left over … can’t wait to see how this green knits up by itself in the third section.

Added afterwards: Mt. Sparrowhawk Sock is wonderful to work with … knotless, no inclination to twist or tangle, and feels great against the skin. And nary a bit of bleeding from either of these very rich colours.

Also: I knew the green “Luna” was going to be lovely but gotta say, now that the shawl is done, that it’s one of the most stunningly beautiful colour combos I’ve ever handled in fibre of any kind. And that’s not just me … people looking at the shawl in person invariably zero in on the green section and drool over it. So SO glad I bought that skein along with the purple one (can’t believe I actually dithered at the time!), especially as it seems to have been a one-of-a-kind colourway. Now I have to find the most perfect show-off use for the remainder …