As you can see from this photo, Alcazar is on a roll. I’m almost done with the center square. If you’ve ever knit a shawl of this type, you’ll know that the center square usually goes quite quickly in comparison to the wave upon wave of outer design elements as they present themselves across an ever-increasing circumference.

Unblocked and unstretched, my center is about 17 inches (43.2cm) square. Although the stuff I’m using isn’t very stretchy, I think it will block out to between 19 and 20 inches (48.2 to 50.8cm) square. A rough eyeballing of the pattern’s finished item photo gives me the estimate that the width of the finished center is approximately a third of the width of the entire finished piece. That makes me more or less on target to make a shawl that’s about 60 inches (152.4cm) across, tops. The pattern specifies a finished dimension of about 56 inches (142.3cm), so I’m in the ballpark, even though I’m using a very different yarn and a needle three sizes smaller than the one specified.

I did find one minor typo in the pivot format half-charts. On row 155, there’s a stitch marked as a SSK the first time you encounter it in the row’s repeat, S1-K2tog-PSSO through most of the rest of the row, and a K2tog the last time it appears on that row. It should be just S1-K2-tog-PSSO EVERY time it’s hit on that row. The full format chart doesn’t have this mistake. (I can’t comment on the rest of the full format chart, as I haven’t been following it.)?