theknittyvritti

la principessa

 

OK, I admit that I have always wanted to be a princess. I went through that phase that lots of kids go through, where they imagine that they were adopted from another family, but my secret long-lost family was royal. And I was always interested in dressing like a princess. One of my earliest memories is of walking to school, maybe first grade, tugging my skirt down to make it as long as it could be, so that it would be more like a princess's skirt.

 

Well, I have arrived. This is the Mandala shawl, by Rene Leverington.  While in Italy, I began to think of it as "la principessa", and now that it is finished, it certainly is regal. My life is much too plebian to do it justice, but I shall just have to start getting myself invited to balls.......

In the "you can't make this stuff up" department, when I went out to do the photos, I realized that there were frogs swimming in the pool, and thus I did my first frog rescue of the season.

 

What do you think will happen if I kiss him?

Technical notes: I used sundara silk lace, color Ruby Port. Although I had some ambivalence about the yarn, and didn't like the lack of saturation of color, I've forgotten just about everything I didn't like in the face of the finished project.

The pattern is a delight. Rene offers four different patterns for each of the four sections of the shawl, so you can individualize your shawl, both in pattern and number of rounds. I did patterns A-B-C-D- and C again. This was my first circular shawl. Getting it started was a tolerable challenge, and I would make another one....if I thought I might have a glut of state occasions to attend.

sisyphean

Yes, I've been gone a long time.

 

And yes, I should have more to show for it than this, but it may not be immediately apparent to you what this is, and why I am so effing proud of it. It's the beginning of my Mandala shawl, the project that may send me into the monastery, since the only way to work on this baby is to stay very, very zen. So much knitting, so little progress. It's not for the type A's among us.

There is little indication of the torture involved in getting this off the ground on Ravelry--there are hundreds of happy people showing off their mandala shawls, beautiful projects all. And almost no whining , so I tried to act like a grown-up and smile through the twelve times it took me to make a round cast-on, and the twenty tries it took to get a version of the first twelve rows that satisfied. And I am finally not being so picky. The good news is that the Sundara lace, while not as beautifully dyed as I had hoped, is strong as dental floss and held up well under extreme abuse. And that I had the foresight to add a lifeline (Myrtle's remnants there, that white Lorna's lace you see in the picture), for I will surely need it. And I will be a lot less zen about ripping 144 stitches a row than I was about ripping 72, and a lot less zen about ripping 288 than 144, and so on and so on.

What can I say. This is my karmic payback for being so cocky about the twelve sweaters I'm knitting this year. Oh, I'll slip in a lace project, I said to myself. It's going so well, no problem. Although I will have my third sweater done next week (if I can just keep from picking up this maddeningly magnetic little meditation circle, that is), I no longer have a great head start on the dozen. Humility comes in strange shapes.