Beginner Sampler Shawl--complete!

I finally finished this shawl. The border was easy to do and easy to remember, but just really tedious. It was a 12 row repeat. I did those without turning the work. I got pretty good at knitting backwards after doing my entrelac shawl. This shawl turned out really big and it was difficult to get a good picture of it in one shot. You can see other pictures at my blog or clicking on the ones below and going to flickr.

I'm mostly posting because this shawl used up a lot more yarn that I expected. I'm not a loose knitter. I made this shawl with Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud yarn. I was planning on using up the 4 skeins that I had, but I ended up needing to buy a fifth. I used around 2/3 of that last ball of yarn. Here are the other details:

Yarn: Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud in Iris (approx 4.66 skeins used)
Needles: Knitpicks Classic Circulars-size 3 for the body and 2 for the border
Unblocked size: 85" x 29"
Blocked size: 92" x 35"
Started: November 14, 2006
Completed: February 8, 2007

Overall, I did enjoy knitting this shawl. I will knit many more from this book. I think that I will have to be very generous with my yarn estimates before starting another one. I have seen a few posts out there about needing more yarn.