Where ART thou?

So, you'll notice a distinct lack of an art museum post from last week.

I know, I know. I promised.

But a madness has descended upon me. A black void of knitting that consumed my whole soul for the past five days. And will probably continue to do so for the next 9 days.

It all started because John's 10 year class reunion was coming up. I hate social events on principle, but this one I especially don't want to go to. Ten years out of school and most of these people have good careers, good income, and a couple of kids. I can't help but feel like an utter failure in comparison. We struggle to make ends meet, our house is an absolute disaster (despite my Better Homes and Garden attitude on here), and we've got no kids to call our own.

Aren't you also supposed to become more attractive by the first reunion? For John, that's no problem. He's no longer the awkward and gangly guy he was in high school. He carries himself with a lot more confidence. And if I may be so bold to claim, he's become f*cking hot.

I, on the other hand, have not aged well at all. I have no career and am an utter hermit. I'm afraid someone's going to question why John's dragging my deadbeat, ugly ogre ass around.

On top of all that, one of my worst high school bullies was in John's graduating class. I don't particularly feel like seeing her.

But John said we had to go because he'd feel awkward if we didn't, seeing as the event is being held at the restaurant down the road. And I do mean right down the road. I can stand on my front porch and see the place.

So, I figured I'd use my reluctance and John's utter devotion to always making me happy to my advantage and get a pretty new dress out of it. For the record, I picked one that wasn't terribly expensive, can be used for more than one occasion, and waited for it to be on sale. I ended up picking out this dress from ModCloth.

And then, the wheels started turning.

You see, that dress is rather plain. I'd have to wear a shawl or something with it to dress it up a bit. But all of the shawls I already have would clash horribly with it, are too dark, or just plain boring.

So, despite the fact that I'm in the middle of my Christmas knitting frenzy, I decided that I would have enough time to knit a shawl. In fingering weight. In two weeks.

Yeah.

I tried to get a couple of my friends to talk me out of it, and for the record, Caitlin really did try. As did John. But Morgan just encouraged me, the foul temptress.

I envisioned something with an all-over lace pattern and that I wanted to fulfill a dream of mine of owning an ivory colored lace shawl. And let's be honest, an ivory color is going to pop like crazy against that dress. I decided to use some stash yarn I already had on hand (one point in my favor!) for this. I've dabbled in handpainting yarn and still had some Knit Pick's Bare Palette in storage. Two hanks to be exact.

Figuring that 880 yards should be more than enough for any pattern that I picked out, I headed for my ravelry favorites. I ended up falling in love with Funkia by Mia Rinde. It was going to be perfect. An all over lace pattern, beautiful leaf motifs, and even some little tiny leaves popping out at the shoulders! Not to mention that the non-leaf lace pattern really does remind me of the flowers on the hosta plant, which the pattern is named for.

So, with callous disregard to the frantic attempts to make me see sense, the fact that my last fingering weight shawl took over a year to make (it was my first one!), Dragonscale took a month, and I still had so many Christmas presents in front of me, I wound up my yarn and cast on.

This is the part where you expect me to talk about the utter failure, right? The pattern was too hard to work out, the yarn was infested with moths, my hand was cut off in a jousting accident, or some other calamity, right?

Well, to my absolute surprise and delight, my shawl is actually coming along quite wonderfully.

Isn't it just breathtaking? It's just working up so beautifully. And so fast! I don't know if it's because I'm so enamored with it which makes it effortless, or maybe the wool gods are just smiling upon me, but I don't think I've ever knit so fast in my life.

As of today, I have 94 rows done of the pattern. There are 141 before bind off, with the option of repeating the 4th chart (16 rows) to enlarge the shawl. Which I will probably do, because I love huge shawls.

I finished the second chart, which was the largest, last night. I'm, against all odds, actually on track of getting this done on time. And I do believe I'll actually be able to get the rest of my Christmas presents done, too.

I even took the time to make myself some pretty stitch markers to use with the shawl. It deserved pretty stitch markers.

Little bees to fly around in my leaves.

I did take a bit of a break yesterday and sort the stash. And by a bit of a break, I mean it took the better part of 6 hours to do.

This is the stash. Well, the stash that I'm keeping. There are currently 2 Joann's bags, a tub, and a big rubbermaid container filled with yarn that need to go away.

The rest got sorted into a chest and many, MANY baskets. I even sorted it all by weight to make my life easier.

And I actually only found one basket's worth of WIP's! See, I'm not a total knitting failure!

I also went back to Cleveland on Saturday with John and Vi to meet up with a couple of other friends (hi, Mikayla and Kayla!) at a Tabletop Cafe. Which was incredibly fun! We played The Resistance and Tokiado before Mikayla and I slipped out to check out a yarn shop that was only 20 minutes down the road.

I was good and just bought a couple of their $2 clearance balls and a skein of Rowan Worsted for a hat I want to make.

When we got back to the cafe, Mikayla headed back home and the rest of us played a round of King of Tokyo. Which I actually won!

And then I promptly ruined the entire evening by spilling the remnants of John's tea all over the game, causing me to stress myself into a terrible stutter.

Such is my life.

All in all though, we had a lovely day and I'm looking forward to heading back there soon!

Well, I suppose I need to dive back in to my knitting now, and completely ignore the fact that I have to get ready for our 3rd D&D session this Saturday.

I don't see any way this could possibly go wrong.