I wanted to cast on for this 2 days ago but realized I didn’t have any beads, which is part of what makes the design POP! Yesterday I swung by Jo-Annes and found some lovely coppery beads. Tonight, I began!!!

This yarn was a gift from FiberFaeries in the Happy Talk Swap - I’m so excited to finally be using it!

The name for this pattern always makes me think of the section in The Little Prince when he meets the fox.

“If you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life…you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back to the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat…”

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near-
“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”
“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you…”
“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.
“But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.
“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.
“Then it has done you no good at all!”
“It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the wheat fields…”

10/10/11 - Here’s another one that I can’t believe I abandoned for so long. What is the matter with me? My issue with this pattern was that when I began to place the beads, they were getting lost in the stitches. They didn’t pop at all, and the beadwork is part of what makes this design so special. I tried a few different stitches to get them to lay more to the front but just couldn’t find one that would work. So finally, I put it aside. Did I pick it up again a few weeks later to fix the problem or come up with a new solution? Oh no, of course not - that would have been far too easy!

I picked this scarf up again on the Erev Yom Kippur - nothing like the Day of Atonement to make you reach way down in the WIPs pile for those that you cast aside for no good reason. I held it in my lap and talked to it for a bit, adjusting stitches, playing with beads. That was then the incredibly simple solution fell into my lap and made me feel incredibly stupid.

Sew on the beads once the scarf is complete so that I can have them just the way I want and make sure they stand out enough.

Like I said, ridiculously obvious, ridiculously simple, and ridiculous that I didn’t think of it before now. The trouble is, so many of these wonderful projects, I got stuck on and abandoned for something new and fresh and shiny, instead of pulling them out a few days later to pick up the pieces and get mojo-ing again. Plus, now I have a really strong knitting group to turn to when I get stuck and a lot of good friends on Ravelry to turn to for advice. I feel like I’ve come up with so many new knitting goals this year: Always do a swatch for sweaters, and wash it. If you feel like something is amiss in a project, put it aside for the rest of the night so you can rethink it in the morning. When you think to yourself, “Hey, I bet I can just finish this in an hour because I’m so close to the end!”, remind yourself that nothing takes an hour in knitting and go to bed - you’ll be happy the next day when it takes you better than 6 hours to finish a button band. And this latest one - when a project frustrates you, put it aside for a few days, but then pull it out again and try to come up with a solution. If you let it sit too long, it will inevitably sit for years before you remember to come back to it.

10/31/11 - Finished! The knitting was actually done last week, but it took awhile to sew on the beads. I also had some issues with the grafting, but only because I wasn’t paying enough attention at first. I just used Kitchener stitch, rather than the special grafting technique since, as she says, when you break it down, it’s still just Kitchener! I wasn’t focusing on making sure the pattern was lining up on both sides the first time I grafted, so I ripped back and did what I should have done the first time - placed stitch markers throughout to keep track that the patterns were forming straight lines!