4/2/09 - I had been dying to make this shawl from the second I saw it. Unlike most projects, I wanted to make it exactly the way I saw it, that’s how much I loved it. In the genie swap, I asked for the yarn and knittyapril granted my wish. I got the yarn yesterday, along with homemade lace stitch markers from her, and today I began. I love this yarn, loved it from the first moment I touched it, loved winding it into an incredibly massive ball, loved thinking that one day, I would dye it and have the perfect shipwreck shawl.

What I didn’t love was the cast-on. Freakin’ impossible cast on. It would have been much simpler if the woman who had created it had given more details, such as mentioning that when she said to pass the yarn over or under the needle, she wanted you to also pass the yarn through her “simple loop.” By the way, her way of forming this simple loop was stupid and fell apart. I have another name for your simple loop, ma’am - a knot. It took me 2 hours to get the cast on right because even once I figured out how to do it, it was so loose and flimsy that, especially with the DPNs, it kept falling apart on me. 4 attempts later, I had managed to cast on.

I’m in love with this project, in love with it from this first moment. I am just so enamored of lace now…I have named this “Miranda’s Shipwreck” because it makes me think of that gorgeous painting by Waterhouse of Miranda, her gorgeous red hair captured by the wind, her skirts billowing as she catches sight of the shipwreck that will bring her future to her and change her entire life.

4/29/09 - Could I possibly be any more anal retentive about this freakin shawl? I’ve been on the Madeira chart for weeks now, not because it’s particularly difficult but because I’m all spazzy about the placement of the leaves. I followed the pattern exactly and decided that the leaves were too close to the YO holes and were, therefore, getting lost in the pattern. After a few more rows, I decided I couldn’t live like that and ripped back to fix it. I put in a few extra rows, got about 5 rows past the point I’d been at the first time, and decided that while the lower set of leaves was perfectly placed, the upper set was just too far away from the YO holes. By one row. Because I’m insane. But I wanted them to be far away enough to be distinctive and still close enough to look like they were connected.

My brain is just amazingly complex, no? I also love working on this shawl while watching LOST - somehow so fitting…

9/19/09 - Finished! I thought the bead-stringing and the endless k2tog, yo might destroy me, even while the repetition was meditative. I really really love the finished product! Today is Rosh Hashana and my mom’s birthday, so it made it extra special to finish it today while we were driving to services and to visit family. It was like the end of it was filled with new, fresh goodness. It, of course, looks like a giant, rumpled, beaded dishcloth since it hasn’t been blocked, but I still love it and I’m excited for it to be dyed and perfect and beautiful!