Let Down

I'm afraid after the flood of finishes and pictures in the last couple of weeks, today's blog post is going to be a little bare. I could show you the yarn for the Light and Dark Lace Club:

What? You can't see that? How about the beads I ordered for the In Dreams Mystery shawl?

Nothing, huh? Okay, how about a spoiler pic for the first shipment of Romi's Pins and Lace club?

Zip, right? Would you like to know why this is? It's because I CAN'T GET INTO MY MAILBOX. I don't know which of these packages is in there, if any, but there is definitely SOMETHING in there because my key will not turn the lock. The locks on our mailboxes are not exactly sophisticated. On the inside of the box there is a small metal lever that prevents the box from opening when the lock is engaged. When you turn the key, that lever simply lowers out of the way and allows the door to open. Whatever is currently in my mailbox is beneath the lever, preventing it from moving. I tried shaking the box, banging on it, everything I could think of to shift the stuff inside enough to let me turn the lock. All I accomplished was bending my mail key. SIGH.

I called USPS on Friday when I noticed the problem and they said they would 'initiate documentation' with my local post office, but whatever documentation they initiated didn't make it in time for the problem to be fixed on Saturday. This is a little inconceivable to me since it seems to me like the only documentation required is an e-mail to my postman asking them to either shift the stuff in the box or drop it off at my door, but what do I know? I thought about taping a note to the mailbox but I decided to wait and see if it gets fixed today. If it was warmer out I would have camped by the mailbox on Saturday until the mail carrier came.

Fortunately, I am not totally devoid of stuff to show. I have spent most of this week working on Sevillano.



I've completed 5 repeats of chart D and I'm well into the 6th. I'm trying to decide if I want to do additional repeats, and if so, how many. The version shown in the pattern took up about 600 yards, and I have 1000, and I don't really know what I would do with 400 yards of silk. My plan is to figure out how many yards I've used when I get through 7 repeats, subtract that from the 600, and estimate how many additional repeats I can do. It's taking me roughly three hours per repeat, and I wish I didn't know that, haha. It's much more daunting to think about in terms of hours instead of number of repeats. And once I knew I probably wasn't going to finish the sixth repeat last night, I...well.



I started Galadriel's Mirror. The yarn is Handmaiden Silk Twist and you can see how the little silk plies take the light differently.



It's a subtle effect in this colorway, at least, but I hope the effect in the overall shawl will be lovely.

I also wound my yarn for the In Dreams mystery shawl.



I'm really glad I did, because my feelings have been very up and down on this colorway. I like my work to be an artistic statement as much as a wearable garment, and I struggle sometimes to maintain a balance between the two. I keep swinging from feeling like I made the right choice, to maybe I could have done better. Winding the yarn did wonders for me, though. I always find that caked yarn gives a much better idea of what the knit-up yarn will look like than skeined yarn does. And as I was winding, I could see that the light skein had notes of emerald green in it that I didn't see in the skein, and it was just lovely and enchanting and much more in line with what I like.

This weekend I went to Star's Beads and looked at a bunch of different bead options, including several that I had almost ordered online but thankfully didn't, since they didn't really work in person. I brought home three options, but I think, unless the mix that I did order from Beadwrangler changes my mind, I'm going with the ones shown, Toho gold-lustered green tea. I really had my heart set on something gold for this shawl, since the inspiration is Galadriel's crown and I very much associate Galadriel with gold rather than green, but I wasn't sure gold was going to work, especially with the dark end of the gradience, which has enough grey in it that it seems like it really ought to be matched with a silver bead. I tried several different gold-lined beads against the yarn and just really didn't like them, so the gold-lustered green tea is a compromise. These beads really are both gold and green, so they were my pick.



I'm waiting to order all 5000 until I can get into my stupid mailbox, just in case I like the bead mix I ordered from Beadwrangler more, but I'm 90% sure these will be the pick.

I do have one finished object to show today. Piece 1 of 3 of the matched set for ma honey is complete.





Ain't he handsome?



I started the scarf for him last night using Jarod Flood's Pavement pattern, but something wasn't working for me. The pattern didn't look right and the cabling was hurting my hands, so I think I need to either try it again earlier in the day and/or with different needles, or select a different scarf pattern. I cannot seem to reconcile myself with giving the man I love a garter stitch scarf. What would other knitters think?