Personal Best

(which is a kind way of saying "Knitting Olympics FAIL")

As you may recall, I signed up to make Sivia Harding's beaded Diamond Fantasy Lace shawl for Steph's Knitting Olympics. Might have worked, too, if I'd remembered a) my schedule and b) "beaded".

After Sivia's class at Madrona (see how clever I am? I signed up to knit something with a teacher and instructions!), my shawl looked like this:




A week-plus-weekend-plus-another-week later, my shawl looked like this:


The final weekend, I admitted that I wasn't happy with the start:
- the first bead was on the wrong side,
- Sivia (herself!) said that she'd probably use a different double decrease if she were writing the pattern today (and then taught it to us),
- errors fudged into compliance,

but I also knew that I seriously loved the fabric created by Tina's BMFA Seduction (oh, BAY-bee!).

To make a long story short ("Too late! Too late! ," I hear you cry) I cut off the first attempt. I started over on Friday morning of The Final Weekend.

I didn't manage an entire beaded shawl in two-and-a-half days. But I did manage enough that Sivia's pattern calls it a "scarf " and I'm well on the way to producing a shawl I'll actually wear and enjoy.





(note to self: If you're knitting a shawl, you probably need an Addi Lace longer than 24" Good thing that Tracy will remind you at PDX Yarn Crawl!)