I love my Mango Snapple Shawl. Every time I wear it, I always get so many compliments from people. Wearing it just makes me feel happy–happy to know that my most beautiful and intricate pieces of knitting is wrapped around my shoulders, made by my own cleverness using string and sticks. So clever. I wore this shawl last Sunday to church, fastened with a cute green pin that I also made, and the whole time I felt so vintage–shawls always make me feel “vintage.” So for the last week I have been itching to start a new lace project.

I love lace, and I love triangle shawls, and I love that these two combine a lot. I mean A LOT. I thought that maybe I would branch out and try to make a new shawl in either square or rectangular, just for some variety, since I already have yarn for two other triangular shawls waiting in my stash. After scouring my patterns for such shapes, I cast on a square shawl first. Unfortunately the pattern started on double-pointed needles, and that doesn’t work so well with fine gauge laceweight. After about three hours of frustration, I put it away to maybe work on later. When the project bag got transported to another location, all the needles fell out of my work, so I knew it was a sign. I frogged my hours of lace-labor and found a pattern for a rectangular shawl that I liked. This time it used a regular circular needle, so I knew I wouldn’t have to mess with fiddly dpns. I cast-on 291 stitches and began knitting. After about three hours of knitting and hardly any progress, I started to notice a problem. Because I am using a variegated yarn, the colors were pooling instead of variegating and striping and such. Another sign. Again, frogged.
Now I was up to two failed attempts. I decided to stick with a triangular shawl using the yarn double-stranded so the colors would be sure not to pool. I found yet another pattern (Wool Peddler’s Shawl from Folk Shawls) this morning and cast-on. Much happiness and elation soon followed. The colors are doing exactly what I want them to do. The shape is just exactly the shape I like (triangle!). And the pattern is easy, yet interesting. The pattern starts with simple garter stitch (knit every row) for half the shawl then switches to a pretty, yet simple lace pattern. It’s kinda monotonous knitting right now. And I am getting insane idiotic enjoyment out of it. Absolutely delirious.

So much for variety.