Setbacks and Amphibians

You know how sometimes everything just seems to be going perfect? It's all turning out fine. Your project is flying by and you, in fact, are going to have it finished in a ridiculously short amount of time.

That's how it was going with Orchid Thief. I flew through my chart repeats. There was a small little scare when I got to the last color in the gradient pack, but I had the perfect amount.

It was time to move onto the edging and have this thing cranked out in less than 10 days.

But, I ran into a little snag.

You see, in reading through the pattern, there was nothing about not being able to enlarge the shawl. I just assumed that I'd be okay.

God, I wished I had looked through the other projects on Ravelry. I would have seen others notes about it. That if I had just enough yarn to do an 8th repeat, the edging would line up beautifully.

But I didn't. All I had left was the edging color.

So, I decided to just forge ahead and figure out my own edging.

Yeah...

To say that it looked terrible is being kind.

So, Orchid Thief got shoved into the timeout box in a fit of rage.

What could I do? I wasn't about to go and buy another gradient pack of yarn. My best hope was to find something I could blend in to what I had and do an extra repeat.

I found something that was the wrong weight (dk instead of sport) and fiber (a mishmash blend of everything compared to the 100% merino I had been using), but the color would blend in wonderfully.

So I bought it and decided to start working again.

But first, I had to visit the frog pond and rip out my edging.

This was right after ripping my needles out and about giving John and a few other knitting friends a heart attack.

It took me all of 5 minutes to rip out an entire days worth of work.

I got all my stitches back on the needles and started in with the new color with a great amount of trepidation.

I mean, what if my gauge was SUPER wonky and I screwed up the whole thing?

But I'm happy to report that it is, in fact, working out. I'm over halfway done with the last repeat and plan on finishing the whole thing in the next week or two. Got some other projects to work on first, as well. Secret projects that you'll see at the end of January.

Also, I have some zombies to kill with my lover. And let's be honest, that's pretty important, too. And pretty damn fun. And if we're being honest here, more appealing than dealing with nearly 400 stitches per row.

So, I'm going to go do that instead of anything productive. Deadlines? Huh? Can't hear you over the sound of the angry hordes of undead.