Variety is the spice of life

When aqua jacke gives you a hard time - turn to some lace knitting instead.

This project was started many moons ago but stalled and was almost forgotten. It is destined to become this:


Then when I saw this awesome finished shawl I was inspired to dig up my own neglected Canadian Living Patons Heirloom Shawl.

Another finished shawl can be seen here (scroll down).

Off Topic: For a good laugh, read about the same knitter's encounter with the knitting police here (May 17 post).

The hitch with this project is that the free pattern has only written instructions and no charts. Now, I do not know how people can create lace out of something that reads:

K1B, p2, k1B, *k2, yfwd, k1B, yfwd, k2, sl1, k1, psso, k1, yfwd, k1B, yfwd, k1, k2tog, k2, yfwd, k1B, yfwd,
[sl1, k1, psso, k2tog] twice, yfwd, k1B, yfwd, k2, sl1, k1, psso, k1, yfwd, k1B, yfwd, k1, k2tog, k2, yfwd,
k1B, yfwd, k2, rep from * once more, k1B, p2, k1B.

This one row would take me forever to knit as there is no way I could keep track of where I am in the pattern. So in order to be able to knit this I had to draw up the pattern in charts, and it seems I stopped knitting when I reached the end of the chart I had drawn so far. For the last couple of days I have been busy producing more charts:

Am I insane? Probably, since deep down in the very heart of me I really enjoy making these symbols come together in a coherent pattern, and the excitement of doing the math to see if I got it right just makes me forget place and time.

There is, however, a higher purpose to making the charts than my own twisted sense of satisfaction. This pattern contains a number of mistakes, as documented here. Knowing this and knowing myself, I want to make sure I find and correct the mistakes before they find me. Otherwise this shawl runs a serious risk of becoming a long-term unfinished object.

My chart is now past one of the crucial points mentioned in the forum above (on paper at least) and I think I have the mistakes figured out. I didn't follow the corrections mentioned in the forum, though, as they didn't quite make sense to me, but I guess there are many different ways of doing this. Not many rows from now we will see if the corrections I made will work in practice as well as they do in theory.

My yarn for this project is Novita Florica. I used it for test purposes in the Mystery Shawl II and was surprised at how nice it turned out when blocked. In a way I also consider this a test project: a test of the pattern and of my own ability to work with and finish it. Just completing those charts will probably take a week or so of allotted knitting time so don't expect this to be a finished object anytime soon.