Derailed

I planned to finish my charity shawl on Friday night.



Still not done, although it is much farther along than this picture shows. Somehow it got left out of my usual Sunday night photoshoot. There are now 7 hearts in the spine panel, leaving me with only the edging chart to do - one last row of hearts that goes across the entire bottomof the shawl as well as the spine. It's something along the lines of 30 rows. The group meets tomorrow, which means that if I really cranked tonight, I might be able to complete it - but I probably wouldn't have time for blocking & finishing. I feel a little bad, because I probalby could have finished it over the weekend if I'd tried, but - I had other plans. Not that those plans turned out to matter.

You see, I planned to finish Fiori this weekend, but instead I spent a large amount of time on Saturday working on this.





This is a second Taygete that I'm knitting out of Mirasol Tupa in Sapphire and Viridian. The rows on Fiori are so long, that I became convinced that my quest to finish it this weekend was futile, which depressed me and made me avoid it. Even though I have a billion things I want to knit and even though I have been working so hard to get some things off the needles, I hauled off and cast on anyway, and then I just couldn't stop. Romi provides a percentage system in the pattern for sizing, making it easy to sub yarn weights. Tupa is a DK weight and I'm knitting it on size 6 needles because - well, those were the only ones I could find. I may try to switch up at the lace section but for the garter the sixes are working fine. As of this picture, I have about 10 more grams to use up before I switch to the decrease side. I may use a little less, just to be safe, but I'm not too worried. I'm more concerned about the colors. This is souvenir yarn I bought at the beach during our vacation last October, and I had wanted to use the turquoise (it's officially sapphire but it looks turquoise to me) as the main color, but the viridian has been so totally overwhelmed by the turquoise, that I think I'm going to do the lace in the viridian in an effort to balance things out. The viridian is a weird color - depending on the light, it looks dark blue, grey, or purple. I love this about it and want it to show up more and I think using it for the lace will really help. Using the turqouise for the picot may bring it back into the limelight somewhat, but I don't think I'll mind. I am still, after all, shooting for a brighter shawl than the last one.

Sunday, I reconciled with Fiori and got this far.



This is about halfway through chart H (maybe just a bit shy of it - I can't remember). I'm impressed that I got so far and it makes me kind of annoyed that I gave up so easily on Saturday. I might not have FINISHED if I had kept working on Saturday, but I probably would have got through chart H and then there's only one chart to go. Sadly, I'm a bit booked up this week, but I fully expect to be done with this next weekend. (Wait. What was that. Did anyone else hear the sound of doom at those words?)

I'm exicted, Fiori is a big shawl and I will feel so accomplished to be finished with it. It's so beautiful, and in such a springy color, that I'm just going to die of happiness when it's done. The Man has instructions as to how to distribute my stash, just in case.

I planned to share my blocked Taygete earlier this week, but though I blocked it, I didn't get around to photographing it until yesterday.



It's 7 feet in wingspan, and something like two feet along the spine.



This caused me some issues in photographing it. It was a challenge to get all of it in the frame without showing too much of my messy house. The ant trap is a seasonal feature. This is right about the time they show up every spring, and now that I have no pets to worry about, I can put out the traps with impunity. They smell like peanut butter. Ella persisted in finding them even when I wedged them under the couch to try and keep them out of her reach. I had to resort to squashing every ant I saw and let me tell you, that is a time-consuming process and not at all good for one's shoes. I tried using black pepper once, but that didn't end well. It worked okay, but cleaning it up later was a total disaster.

But I digress.





The observant among you may note that this stitch pattern is the same one I showed in my sea turtle swatch before.



Clearly Romi and I are soulmates.



Many thanks to The Man for his photographic assistance. I assure you, I am just as tired as I look in these photos. I didn't do much else for the rest of the day. DST is not my friend.