The one that took 6 months..

I was gonna attend a play. Previously whenever I'd attend a play I've always regretted bringing along a commercially-purchased pashmina. This time - I tell myself, I will bring my Madli shawl with me.

I dreamily envisioned the lustrous dark purple shawl that will go so beautifully with my black dress and dark nail polish... then my imagination was given a swift kick in the butt when I realised that my Madli shawl had another 75 rows to go, plus grafting, plus ends to be woven in, plus blocking. Not to mention this was a project that I had started in June and it was now Sept and I hadn't felt like picking it up at all for the past few months. This would also be a good time to inform my ambitious imagination that the play was to be at 2pm the next day.

Talk about working on a deadline. I actually managed it. Stayed up till 2am and got the whole thing grafted, blocked and all. Draped it casually around my shoulders the next day while hanging around in the theatre foyer waiting for the play to start.

And then I promptly dropped the shawl into the toilet bowl during intermission.

Some projects just have a tougher life than others.... Here are pics of it while it was clean.

Madli Progress

Thanks everyone for your words of encouragement on my rather unusual start to Madli's shawl :)

I'm glad to report that I've successfully ventured into the center portion of the shawl pattern & am enjoying the 'wave' motifs very much. Unlike my first Kimono shawl, this does not have any glaring errors (so far). I'm about 6 reps into the center pattern (25 more to go), and the experience of knitting with the Zephyr lace yarn + addi lace needles is almost magical. I'm once again addicted to lace...

Progress on Madli

Zephyr yarn in Plum

In other knitting/crochet news, I'm making up several of these coasters for a friend's housewarming gift. He likes natural earthy home decor items (think unpolished wood and rough ceramic bowls), so I'm using this raffia-type yarn in keeping with the rustic feel. Simple single crochet in spirals, with a backward crochet edging. The yarn is too busy for anything more.

Madli trouble

My 2nd lace shawl project (Madli's Shawl by Nancy Bush, from IK Summer 2004) has been jinxed from the start. I finished the 26 row border each time, only to mess up and had to painfully rip it - and I did this a total of 4 times!! The pattern requires a lot of concentration, and my brain tends to drift off when I knit... Obviously the shawl didn't like competing for brain space with mundane thoughts such as 'what shall we have for dinner?'

On the 5th try, I finally got past the border, put a lifeline there (Pearlie White Anti-bacterial Floss for the winz), and happily knitted really fast for another 3 inches or so. When I finally stopped to congratulate myself on my intensely prolonged attention span, this is what I found :

Two. Borders.

Seems that I repeated the border pattern a 2nd time instead of starting on the actual shawl pattern. I bet these are the same brain cells that direct me to drive the wrong way REPEATEDLY, even though I tell myself NEVER to drive via that way again.

There is no way I am going to rip this again (plus I worry for the state of the delicate lace yarn), so I've decided that my Madli shall just have 2 borders.