Clearly I'm Optimistic

There's no other excuse for it. Either I'm batshit crazy (entirely possible), or I'm too optimistic for my own good. Remember how I was going to finish that shawl for the Ravellenic Games? Remember how I had a ball of 800 yards of lace weight yarn and beads?

I'm sure all of you saw it coming.



I clearly did not finish the shawl. In fact, I didn't even come close to finishing. I almost got finished with chart one, but I didn't even finish that. But hey, that's okay, the games are about challenging yourself, and honestly, getting it even on the needles was a challenge in itself.

Still, I thought certainly I would be finished before I had to move! I happily continued to knit, knit, and then move, and then keeping knitting.

And keep knitting.

And keep knitting. It's been almost a month since the Games ended. Finally, finally the end of this shawl is in sight. Am I anywhere near finishing?



Uh, no. I'm on row 13 out of 16 for the last chart, and I strongly suspect I'm at a billion stitches because it takes an hour to do one row- and not even the beading rows. I can't even imagine blocking it.  It'll take up my entire apartment because I can already tell it's huge. It's huge and heavy and fun to knit. I actually don't even mind that I have to look at charts to knit it. It's the power of beads I tell you. I am going to be so excited when it's done.

If I ever get there that is...

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!