I thought I’d try something a little novel for this blog.  A short post.

What? It could happen. Maybe a “shortish” post for now.

Back in July, I started a supported spindle spin that ended up being a far larger project than I imagined.  See, I usually spin just to spin.  Then the yarn gets put on the wall where it may take me years to use because I spin more than I knit or weave combined.

I talked about this project back in August and showed a bunch of in progress pics.  Well, around late September I got it in my head that maybe I could finish it by November 10th and have it blocked and dry in time for the Edmonton Fibre Frolic.  I do these things – putting unnecessary pressure on myself.   Still it was only a couple of rows a day, as long as nothing went wrong and if I could keep up with the spinning. It also depended on how many repeats of the penultimate chart I decided to do.  As written or one repeat, it was doable. The knitting alone though was a huge undertaking.  True lace (no rest rows) and shaping I’ve never done before. Some days a row would take me 2 hours – especially if I had to go back and find an error or fix one in the row below.

So to recap:

Here’s the yarn.  That’s going to look really dark on some screens.  It contains mostly blue silk and some teal silk and about 30% black Merino.:

The pattern is “Queen of Heaven” from MMario (Leo M. Pola). The pattern is short on details.  No gauge (which isn’t a big deal with a shawl), no yardage or yarn weight requirements and no finished size. I could do up to 2 repeats of that second last chart.

Every day was a spinning and knitting day.

Around the middle of October, I started to realize how big the shawl was going to be and how difficult it would be to photograph when I finished it.   I noticed photos were showing a lot of white where there wasn’t any in real life.   This shawl in person looks solid black or dark blue unless you see it in bright light.  In photos though, I was seeing white rings that weren’t there.  Still, it looks wonderful in person.  Better still, I was on track to finish early.

On November 1st, I bound off and anticipating blocking the shawl the next day, I headed to bed. I’d made the goal, the shawl would even be ready a few days early.

Then it happened.  In late October, Ryan had come home coughing but it didn’t seem to amount to more than that. On November 2nd, it was apparent that my 3+ year run of not being sick was over. I woke up with chills and fever and a very bad migraine. The next day, the cough and congestion set in.

All I managed to do that week was to block the shawl and I did it rectangularly instead of round due to space limitations and low problem solving power. I’ll block it round next time, when I have more brain power.

I lost the whole month to trying to recover. I missed the Fibre Frolic. All that’s left is some fatigue and shortness of breath with exercise nearly 2 months later.

In that time though, I kept trying to get good photographs of the shawl and I never did get one I was happy with of the full shawl, so instead, I offer some partial shots.  The close up shots are pretty true to colour.  The ones on the mannequin are far more muted than the shawl is in real life.  I’ll replace those one of these days now that I’ve also pressed the backdrop. Or maybe in the summer when I can get more intense light on it.

The shawl pin is from Off the street Jewelry

In the end, I hope I did the Lady Aurora (Aurora Borealis) who inspired it proud.

The final stats on the shawl are:

• 29% Merino, 71% Mulberry silk.
• Total weight 145g.
• A heavily estimated 950 – 1000 yds used
• A yarn weight somewhere in the 655-682yd/100g range and grist of 2971.81-3128.22ypp. I’d put that in lace territory especially for handspun which tends to be a little heavier than commercially spun yarn.
• Completed between July 21 and November 1st.

For someone like me who takes 3 months to hand knit a pair of socks, this was a truly accidentally epic project to finish in this time frame.

Today’s title isn’t so much from a song title or other pop culture reference but every time I thought “Accidentally Epic”, the tune that accompanied it was Elegantly Wasted by INXS.