In Which the Heroine Discovers a New Use for Scotch Tape

Hi!

Okay, so I jumped on the bandwagon for the Mystery Stole 3 knit-along. I figured, 3000+ knitters can't be all wrong, right? And you know me... I can't be happy just doing a "good job"... I have to be an overachiever. So despite the fact that I am working 55 hours a week at the shop, I jumped into two (yes... 2) Mystery Stole projects. So far, it's good.

I am knitting one stole in black merino laceweight yarn (oh yes... and knitting lace in black, well, that just makes it even more mind-bendingly difficult, no? so of course, I want want to do that ...) with iridescent sorta-black beads. Yes, it's beaded, too. With teensy-weensy seed beads. It just gets worse and worse, doesn't it? Sigh. Shoot me now. I really like the Addi Lace Needles I'm using, mostly because of the cord, which is thin and very flexible. This stole will be stunning in black, and the little seed beads look like drops of dew. Here are a couple pictures of it, after I finished clue #1:

And now, children, let me tell you of my new knitting tool discovery: scotch tape! I love this stuff. Did you know, it comes out of the dispenser and it actually sticks to things??? How cool is that? I wanted to lay out my marvelously-knitted-and-beaded stole beginnings to show them off to my loyal readers, but being the lazy cuss that I am, I didn't want to block it with a spritzer and pin it out and be all proper about it. Down and dirty, that's me. So I just taped that sucker down on the counter with scotch tape. Yessah, b'god, it worked just fine, deah. (That's Maine talk for 'My, what a marvelous invention Scotch tape is for knitters!')

I also am knitting a second Mystery Stole 3 from the teal-y, ocean-y alpaca lace weight yarn that astute yarndemon readers will remember I dyed about a year or two ago (the "Blue Spaghetti" post). Yup, I never found the perfect use for it. But now, I can make at least two Mystery Stole 3 stoles from the 2400 yards of it that I have, with enough for a scarf left over, maybe. I am beading this one too, because I guess I don't know what that word "optional" means. The yarn is a lot darker and greener than I remembered it being, but it is still a nice ocean color, and I am using light blue iridescent beads which I am preferring to think of as seafoam along the edge of the shawl. Poetic, no? I have only got about 70 rows of the first 100 rows of the stole done on the teal stole, and the picture below was taken after only about 20 rows, I think, but it is enough to show you how it looks in the teal alpaca with the light blue beads. And plus, I got to use that fun Scotch tape again:

The second clue was released on Friday, July 6, and no, I haven't even begun it yet, unless you call printing out the charts and Scotch taping them together a beginning. But I plan to at least have the black stole clue #2 done by this coming Friday. My primary knitting target is the black merino stole, with the teal alpaca stole suffering along as an also-ran, to be done if I have time. So far, so good. We will see how it goes. :)