Well, that was a lot of knitting!
I finally got into the rhythm of it about a third of the way through. I had to keep checking my counts between sections to make sure I wasn’t missing an increase, but otherwise it went pretty smoothly.
I waited until the knitting was complete to do the manipulation to the “hole” sections, and I love how it looks.
Of course, by now all of the parts of the mystery have been released, and I couldn’t resist checking out the final design to see if I think I’m going to like my choice of the “pop” color. I think so, even though it is dark, and some of the details may not be quite as visible as they would have if I’d chosen a lighter color. The texture of this section is just so much fun.
I decided not to bind off the last row (except for the loopy sections), since I now know we would have been picking up stitches in a later clue. On to clue 2!