Shawls & Fire

I wept openly in the car, today. I blame it on the morning KEXP DJ picking perhaps the best three songs ever to play.

To be honest, I've forgotten the other two. But it was Arcade Fire's "No Cars Go" that made me weep openly on the way to work. Weep openly in a good way, I might add. It was just so awesomely epic and gorgeous and sweeping. You know what I mean? Glorious song. Made the pouring rain this morning less of a bother.

In other news, it's FINALLY DONE. The Shawl of Death.

I don't think I've explained this project much at all, so allow me to enlighten you all. Knitting nerdiness ahead.

I found this pattern for a scarf a week ago and thought it would make a fun way of getting rid of a bunch of my random yarn. So I started in.

Now, part of learning to knit is learning how to multiply stitches and inches so you find the perfect "gauge" for your knitting. Basically how to make something the right size.

Well, apparently, my multiplication was rather off. That was my previous post about casting on 181 stitches. Which I still find ridiculous. And for good reason! No scarf knitted with worsted weight yarn was ever 181 stitches across, I have a feeling, and yet...

Here I am, a week and five skeins of yarn later, and I don't have a scarf. I have a freakin' shawl. It's very cozy, of course, but it's HUGE. I don't know what I was thinking when I did my math.

However, the irony is that I've always wanted to knit a shawl but never managed to. Now that I've knitted one, it was entirely by accident. *sigh*

Here's a few pictures of the thing. Note the lace interchanged with knit stitch. It was really quite fun, if not exhausting.





Don't I look exhausted? This is me tired of looking at these rows upon rows upon rows of lace...knit...lace...knit...*screams and runs for the hills*

The colors don't show up great in these images, but I used five colors: dark green, a light grass green, a dark teal, a jewel-tone "peacock" color, and a pale blue. I was going for a cool colors palette, really. But mostly I wanted to get rid of all this random yarn.

Well, it worked. I'm lighter five skeins of yarn. Yes! But there's plenty more to be rid of soon enough. More projects are likely on the way.

This is the first night this week I haven't been slaving away on some school project. Feels good. Finals coming up.

The end is near (read: graduation).

-The GLS