What a KAL can do - FO: Parrot

First of all, thank you for all the nice words you've put on my recent FOs! I appreciate every single one of them :)

I've never really been much of knitting podcast listener; my job is not of the sort where you can listen to podcast while working and my commute is quite short, so I've prioritised audio books to get just a bit of literature into my very scientific world. Earlier this year, Karen - Danish blogger of the blog lindse.dk - started a video podcast (in Danish), which I like a lot, though. With that came a Ravelry group, and now she's hosting a shawl knit-a-long running in September and October. I wanted to take part to get some inspiration and not least some good company, and decided that the Parrot shawl from Helga Isager's recent Bird Collection should be my project.

Yes, that is my 20th finished Amimono knit. It's an anniversary!

Initially, I didn't think too well of Parrot when I first saw it in the pattern book - I didn't like the colours of the sample - but then projects started to appear on Ravelry, and my affection for it grew.

It turns out that a KAL was just what I needed to get my knitting speed up. I'm practically on a roll! Within 20 days, I finished knitting this huge shawl! And now I'm almost halfway through the second one (Flukra by Gudrun Johnston). I can hardly believe it myself.

Pattern: Parrot shawl (Rav link) by Helga Isager.
Yarn: Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift in 3 different colours (Aubretia, Lupine, and Scotch Broom), Blackhill Highland Wool from Garnudsalg.dk in 8 different colours (Æggesnaps, Kommen, Syrlig, Lilla, Grå Skifer, Rullesten, Asters, and Honning), and Holst Garn Supersoft in Graphite (the 'main colour', i.e. the cast-on edge and the tassels). 170 g in total (of which 10 g are for the tassels).
Mods: CO 942 sts to get the shawl slightly larger than in the pattern (CO 726 sts), i.e. six feather and fan pattern repeats more on each side. I used knit stitches only in the feather and fan pattern (didn't think all that purling made too much of a difference, so I didn't do it).
Comments: By advice from others I put stitch markers every 36 sts (39 sts at the edges because there are 3 edge stitches) to avoid counting too much while casting on all those stitches and keeping track of them all in the feather and fan pattern. Also, I spit spliced the yarn when changing colour to avoid weaving in a million ends!
My Ravelry project page is here.