Pooled Knits KAL. Does swatching start as the start date? I think so!

First swatch was on size 7 needles - too big! I know I want to switch colors in the middle of faggoting, and I was left with no room for anything interesting in the middle.

Then I went down to size 5 needles… it was a bit loose, so I did a kfb here and there until it tightened up. Stitch count ended up as:
Blue 8 * Pink 8 * Yellow 8 * Tan 8 * Green 14 * Tan 8 * Yellow 8 * Pink 8 * Blue 8
Not all the 8s are completely perfect, but it is close enough to fudge. Plus, 8 stitches minus 2 on each side for the faggoting means 4 stitches in the middle. So, since I did originally fall in love with the melon stitch, I made a melon stitch across 4 stitches rather than 6.

4 stitch mini-melon:
skip 2 stitches, pull next two stitches over edge, yo, k2, yo
It’s the o/|o on the chart in my photos. I didn’t bother charting the edge section on the left; it’s pretty easy to infer.

Then with the 14 stitches in the middle, I lost two on each side to the faggoting, so then I had ten stitches. I’m using a little leaf from the giant sampler shawl, which should be cute in green.

Leaf stitch was full of fail, so did a double 5-stitch melon instead. Finally ended up with: yo, k2tog (faggoting) pull stitches 4&5 over 1,2,3, yo, k3, m2, pull stitches 4&5 over 1,2,3, k3, yo, k2 (faggoting). The m2 (backwards e) works better than double yo. The first few rows don’t have this final melon, but I didn’t want to drop down again. The first few melons are a bit misshapen, oh noes!

Good lord this was an exhausting knit. It was fun at first, but after 101 pattern repeats, I definitely need a vacation from lace.