restarting a project

I think probably many people who do some kind of a craft have partially-finished projects tucked away. Sometimes you wind up leaving them - and who ever inherits your stuff gets them (and if the project is lucky, the person finished it). Sometimes you wind up tossing them. Or taking them apart and reusing the supplies for something else.

But sometimes, you come back to them and start them up again.

I had left the "Rosy Fingered Dawn" shawl for nearly a year - perhaps just about a year. I started it last summer (IIRC) and worked on it a while, then, I think what happened was that I went on vacation, decided it was too "fragile" (in the sense of the likelihood of stitches being dropped off needles) to bring along, and I kind of got out of the rhythm of it. I had kept it on a small side table in my living room and periodically looked at it and thought about restarting it. Or I thought, "I should not leave that ball of yarn sitting on the floor; if I get carpet beetles hatching out again they will eat it."

But I never got around to restarting.

Finally, yesterday, I decided to. It took a little while to figure out where I was in the pattern (I guess I picked up the row-counter I had been using and started using it for another project), but going by the chart I was able to figure out where I was.

So I finished the section called "Dawn's Chariot Wheels" and am now working (just barely started) on "The Gates of Dawn." Which also means I've changed colors - I am on the second of six colors now (they grade slowly from pink through violet to a medium blue).

Unfortunately, the shawl won't be very photogenic for a while - I have it bunched up on a single long-ish circular needle, so I can't really lay it flat to photograph. (I might, at some point, be able to spread out one side on the needle, bunching up the rest, and photograph that).

And no, I don't really know when or where I will wear it. I don't wear the Song of Hiawatha shawl very often. But with these, for me, it's kind of an Everest thing: I knit it because it is there. Because I want to prove to myself that I can do it.

(And really, like any big project, it's mostly mental: not letting yourself be dragged down by the "oh man, this section is 30+ rows of really densely spaced complex yarn overs, decreases, knits, and purls and I will have to pay attention to every stitch." I think I described Hiawatha as being the knitted equivalent of a doctoral dissertation; this is similar. And like doing a doctoral dissertation, it's only partly skill and knowledge; an equally big part is having the persistence to finish).

Luckily, the shawl is entirely charted. I find that for me, working from charts is much easier. Being able to see, in kind of a "picture" format, what I'm supposed to be doing, where I've been, and where I'm going next, is a lot easier. Line by line written instructions, I find, unless they're fairly simple (not too many different things in a line), it's really easy for me to skip over sections or to repeat sections.

I also prefer the "symbolcraft" format for crochet patterns - which is sort of the crochet version of charting. (And I'm happy that Interweave Crochet, by and large, includes the symbolcraft diagrams with its patterns, especially the lacy ones).

I suppose it's because in a lot of ways I'm a visual person, and also seeing the "big picture" helps me out - I can tell if I've made a mistake, usually, before I get too far along.

I know some people really dislike charts or find them hard to follow. I suppose the best thing for designers to do is to include both.

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Speaking of symbolcraft, I really love the "Midsummer Night's Dream" shawl in the new Interweave Crochet and actually already bought the laceweight Malabrigo (in a different colorway however) to make it. I might look the pattern over and see if it would be straightforward enough to use as a traveling project; I'm going to be logging a lot of car-time where I won't be the driver when it comes to going to the Prairie Conference the end of this month.


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And Ivy Block works.

Well, mostly. I have a tiny bit of rash on the inside of my left wrist, but as that's where I was winding the rope from the circular nested quadrat when we had to move from point to point, it probably had the greatest exposure, plus it likely rubbed off the Ivy Block.

I will say that Ivy Block is apparently very drying to the skin; my skin looked kind of like it does mid-winter after wearing the stuff.

But at least (as of now) there's no rash on my face or directly on my hands.

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