If there is ever an apocalypse.

I know we'll be warm..... and pretty 'cause damn! I rock!

The story of my Evenstar shawl, which officially began in the spring with the purchase of a fleece from a South African Meat Merino name Victoria (blog post A, B, C and D) and began as an actual story when I saw the pattern on Ravelry, has come to its full and final conclusion in the glory that is.....

This.......

I am in awe of the fact that I took wool, literally off the sheep's back and made something so beautiful....

I rule! That is all!

I'm so close I can taste it..... Sort of

My Evenstar shawl is nearly complete....


hrmmmmm.... Perhaps I should clarify my definition of "complete." I have finished the main body of the shawl and am now working on the border.... the vast, endless border that is the crowing glory of this shawl (I am doing an unbeaded version, so perhaps my "crown" is a little less lustrous than it could be).... I thought the last chart of the shawl was going to kill me. Each row of that final chart was 560 stitches (some over 600) and the chart was 71 rows.... If you do a little math, that equals around 40,000 stitches (I'm rounding). I shouldn't do math, it's bad for my knitting mojo.   As I crept higher up the chart, I could feel the excitement building... perhaps I could actually start one of the kids' back to school sweaters BEFORE they started school next week! or maybe even the cardigan that I've wound the yarn for... or finish a couple of patterns I've been working on.... or a hat.... or a cowl.... or something... something that was NOT what I was working on (which I love BTW. I don't want to give the wrong impression. I get very antsy near the end of a project, the urge to move on to something fresh is somewhat difficult to overcome). I finished row 67 (the last patterned row) and I knew I was close... three garter stitch rows and then only the border would remain. How bad could a border be???? I shouldn't have asked myself because then I started calculating exactly "how" bad it would be. I've knit a few items with attached borders, so I knew how they worked. A pattern of stitches is knit perpendicularly to the body of the item and attached on every right side row to the main body of the item by knitting a live stitch from the body together with the last stitch of the border or edging you are attaching....this means that for every live stitch you must complete two rows of the edging (right side and wrong side).......  This translates very badly for me and my calculations. There are 560 live stitches at the end of that last chart.... 560 stitches that need to be attached to the border. 560 stitches means I will have to complete roughly 1120 rows to complete the shawl... at an average of  18 stitches per row, that equals approximately...... TWENTY THOUSAND more stitches....

nearly complete my ass.

In the Nick of Time.

After a marathon of flicking, carding and spinning over the past few days, I am done. Actually, I should probably restate that... I am as done, as I'm gonna be. I have only today to pack for me, the children and the dogs for a lengthy trip to BC, clean my house and do all the little things around the home that need to be done before I go.

First of all, I want to say that I'm pretty damn proud of myself. I took a fleece... straight off the sheep's back (The Sheep and The Process) and transformed it into yarn.

Unfortunately that yarn, did not fully meet up with my expectations:

A) It's under plied (you can see this quite clearly in the pictures below). This is a problem which I might be able to fix, if I had more time, but I don't and I still want to bring the yarn with me on my trip. However, if I manage to do all of my chores today, I might run it through my wheel again, to somewhat fix that.... we shall see.

B) It's too thick. I had planned on a laceweight yarn, but my finished yarn turned out to be fingering weight.

C) My dye job.... Actually, the colour is PERFECT. Exactly what I had in mind.... regrettably, the areas where the yarn was tied, did not dye (there is a reason that it's called Tie Dye, after all).... so there are lighter and whiter patches in the yarn in these spots (you can see this in the last dye picture). I knew this was going to happen, but in my rush to finish last night, I forgot to check...... I could dye the yarn again, but as I mentioned already... I am out of time and so, I will knit the yarn as is and if the whiter spots bug me, I'll attempt to over-dye the finished shawl.




D) I have 1300m. The pattern calls for around 1350m. I am taking a big risk here. I did a Ravelry search for a new pattern, but I have my heart set on Evenstar. And so ..... even with the problems mentioned above, I am going to use my yarn to attempt to knit it..... and hope for the best..... if worse comes to worse, I guess I will have to finally admit defeat and use a mill-spun yarn for the shawl... because I WILL knit this shawl.

Stay tuned for THAT adventure...... although blogging will be limited to non-existent while I travel.....

And for a final picture.... Look at my cutie doggies.... they had a fresh haircut yesterday. I LOVE it when they're newly clipped, they look ridiculous.....

Infinity.

Will it ever end? To paraphrase German philosopher  Friedrich Nietzsche "I have stared into the abyss and it has stared back." I've been flicking and carding and spinning (Oh My!) for days and it feels like I've barely touched the pile of fleece at my feet..... I would REALLY like to have this yarn finished for my big trip to BC next week, but I'm starting to think that's not going to happen....

I started with this:

Did a whole bunch of this:




I've spun this (I'm guessing it's about 150 grams, hopefully close to 2500m of singles, if it's less, I'm in trouble and probably won't be able to finish this yarn for my trip... I still have to pack for me, both kids and the dogs for a 4-5 week journey. Plus, I need to clean my house, take the car in for a tune up, check out Stampede, deal with Chey's last week of pre-school, keep both kids occupied AND knit my stripe of the latest WCOBBS blanket that I've volunteered for... this means that  I need to finish spinning this by tomorrow to have any hope of dyeing and drying this yarn to go. Yikes!):

and I still have this:

I had no idea........