This is a marathon, not a sprint

The good news is, I finished my Ravellenic sweater. It's fabulous. It was such a joy to knit, and I'll be talking about it more on Friday.

The bad news is that finishing the sweater meant I had to turn to my other daunting goal for the games: a beaded shawl. I had originally intended to knit a Laminaria, during a quick search after I purchased the yarn. I wanted something BIG and LACEY and easily beaded to suit the fine, beautifully colored yarn ($7 for 1200 yards. Can you believe it?!). I have no idea why I chose the Laminaria pattern because it wasn't easily beaded and frankly, it's not really my aesthetic, nor did it look easily memorized. So after realizing that I was really stalling on knitting this shawl, I decided on a quick change of venue.



Instead, I cast on for a Frozen Leaves and happily began. Not only is the pattern easily beaded, I got to go bead crazy. I'm opting to put beads on the center of the leaves of every other row on chart A, and i'll figure out what to do about the transition rows.

Again, I love beading. I hate working from difficult charts, but I looooove beading. This shawl is turning out to be the best of both worlds because two repeats in and I don't have to look at the pattern, plus I get to spill beads everywhere.

It's actually faster going than  I thought it would be- I'm working on size four needles, and it's producing a lovely airy product that almost looks good enough to leave unblocked. It's still going to be difficult to finish on time- I'm planning on making this extremely large to use up as much yarn as possible, so I still have a good chunk of yardage to go- which is why I spent all day working on it!