Knitting Without a Pattern

All of these shawls are helping me build my knitting skills. I knew these techniques already, but using them in so many projects in a row is helping to burn them into my brain, hopefully for good this time. I'm remembering that I want to slip the first stitch of every row, and that I want to start with a garter stitch tab, whether the designer told me to or not. With the lasts pattern I used, I finally figured out that there are ways to increase that won't leave the symmetrical line of holes that I usually love. For this one, I don't want holes.

This yarn, First Love, is from the Hobby Lobby Incident last month (otherwise known as their 75% off clearance sale) and I knew I wanted a fairly plain shawl so that the  yarn could do its thing without distraction, but I also wanted something interesting about the knitting. That's where the center cable comes in. Instead of one or two plain stitches between rows of yarn overs, there's a cable.  I'd seen other shawls with center cables and as soon as this one is done, I want to go through my books of stitch patterns and see what else I can run down that center spine.