Thursday, 11:25 pm

Four and a half more edging repeats to go. Thirty-six more rows, 549 stitches.

No more yarn.

Let me back up a bit. Before getting to that place of horror, I had worked my way through several obstacles. When I sat down to knit, I still had 31 more repeats of the edging motif to complete, and I figured I'd knit until about 10, and then knock off for bed. As I approached my self-imposed witching hour, I counted and realized that I had somewhere around 16 more repeats to go, and less and less yarn with every row, and decided that a) sleep is overrated, and b) I wasn't going to sleep anyway, what with wondering how the whole thing was going to end, and c) how long could it take to finish up those last repeats, anyway?

Note to self: sixteen repeats at about 122 stitches per repeat is not a trivial time commitment.

An hour and a half later, I had negotiated a new sleeping place for Older Daughter, who wanted to sleep with me while Rick and Younger Daughter are out of town, retrieved her and put her back in bed when she went sleep-walking, untangled a nasty knot in my yarn to the tune of 20 minutes, and dealt with a break in the yarn. I had also completed eleven and a half repeats, and had a mere four and a half to go.

And then I ran out of yarn.

I could see it coming. By the time I got to the fifth to the last repeat, it was clear that I wasn't going to make it. There was a certain sick fascination in the whole thing, though, so I kept knitting. All the while, I was madly making plans to snip bits off of the cast on tail (all of four inches) and the tail left at the other end of the edging (about six inches), and to try pretty much any desperate tactic to see the thing through. I'd entirely given up on achieving any kind of reasonable bedtime, and was starting to calculate just how little sleep might still count as "enough".

And then a little voice in my head shouted what you're probably all already thinking:
"The swatch, dummy. Cannibalize the swatch."

And so I did. Here's how much I had left when I finished.
But I made it. By midnight, no less.

This morning, as I soaked the shawl, I realized that I don't have the right blocking equipment for a faroese shawl. Straight blocking wires I have in abundance. Not so much with the ones that bend. But when I started to spread the shawl out on the bed, I realized that as fine as this yarn is, I didn't want to stretch it as thoroughly as I might otherwise. Look, ma, no wires!
(That's a yardstick, btw, just so you get a sense of how big this is.) The arc isn't as smooth as it would have been with pins and wires, but I am satisfied.
Doesn't it almost look like an old Roman coin? There's something about the lacewings in that giant half-circle, coupled with the edging, that brings old coins to mind. And of course, my very favorite part of any lace piece...
The bit between the edge and the body.

I am in love with this shawl. As big as it is (and believe me, it is big), it is light as air, and moves in any breeze. The whole thing is a mere four ounces, but it is very warm.
(Please ignore the sheets I stripped off the guest room bed in order to block the shawl.)
Older Daughter modeled it for me. As did my desk.
I don't know about you all, but I am pleased as punch with the way this turned out. I am so glad I went with this yarn; it was perfect for this pattern, and the shape of this shawl. I think I'm a little bit in shock that it's finished. I wasn't expecting it to be done until Sunday, and I think my brain isn't quite in gear about it yet, because I know that I'm not conveying my mad deep love for this shawl at all.

To recap: This is Anne's new faroese shawl Lacewing; she's also doing a rectangle version of the shawl. I do believe that she's released the pattern as of today. Hang on... Yup. Go check it out right now. Hers is absolutely stunning, and her photography, as always, is far superior to mine. I knitted mine in Chewy Spaghetti Capellini in the colorway Honest; it's a handpainted merino/silk blend, 4 oz/1260 yards. It's lighter weight than the yarn that Anne used, so you can see how it would look in something closer to a fingering weight if you check hers out. I used size six and size four circular needles. The pattern was amazingly clear, especially given all the shaping and charts involved, and I enjoyed knitting it so much that I'm almost sorry it's done. I say almost because come on, look at that shawl. Who wouldn't want that FO hanging around their house? I'm considering bringing it to Older Daughter's soccer game tomorrow just so that I can pet it. Would it be weird to sleep with it?

But now what do I knit?