Fiber Monday 235: Free At Last

It only took 16 weeks...

This morning, I woke up to birdsong and cold feet. That's a very pleasant change from the usual steaming discomfort of a coastal August, so I'll 100% accept it. Cool dry air had me scrambling for my previous shawl (the green one I made on here before this madness), and I set to work with my morning coffee.

With guest star: leftover apple crisp.

It only took a couple of extra hours, but I eventually had that beautiful feeling of a job finally done. I slip stitched my last stitch, snipped and wove my tails, and...

It was finally, finally over.

I am hereby freed from the tyranny of the Lost Souls Shawl!

This is a lovely pattern, to be sure, and I might remake it someday. With a thicker fiber. And a much bigger hook.

Because 16 weeks (which, let's be honest, was really more along the lines of 40 hours total working time or so...) is insane for any project smaller than a California King sized bedspread. This should have been a 3 week project.

But I'm inconsistent in my crochet hours, distractable, and just generally undisciplined, so it took as long as it took.

It's a lovely light and airy shawl, but there's one tiny issue I have with it...

Literally tiny...

It's... it's maybe a little small? Especially for all of the time and material?

My green shawl for scale. The wings of the larger shawl can be tied behind my back to
make the shawl into a shrug. I absolutely cannot do that with the LS Shawl.

Make no mistake, this is still a shawl, it's just... small. If I wore it with a sufficiently spoopy pin, it'd make a great addition to a witch costume, so that's how I'll treat it. It's a fashionable accessory rather than a purely functional one (like the green shawl, which is great for cold nights).

I'm going to keep working on the purple project I previewed on here before, and hopefully that'll be done sooner rather than later, lol!

My final note is this:

I'm probably going to revisit another part of the pattern, specifically the shells, to make a new shawl in the future. I'd just make it more like a "viral" shawl, which is called that because of how quickly it grows. I also wouldn't be using a lace-weight linen. That was very stupid of me.

Lessons learned, shawl complete, that's one less thing to worry about this week!

That's all from me today, folks!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Fiber Monday 233: Week 14 of the Lost Souls Shawl

Fourteen weeks of skulls and lace...

We're on the home stretch, I think. I'm running out of thread, and while it's going to make a handsome scarf, I don't really know if this will be big enough to be considered a shawl on me. Then again, I'll just be happy to be done!

It does still look good, though :)

I cannot believe how long this has taken. I figured on this being a five, six week project! But then each row started taking about an hour, and I started to get bored. Project burnout is such a bummer! Thankfully, I've been able to do some work on the side, but that has extended the timetable for completing this project, so I've kind of backed myself into this corner. Ah well :P

Science mug for scale.

With how dinky that ball of thread is, I'm thinking I've got maybe one more repeat before the endgame, so hopefully, in the next couple of weeks, we'll be starting our next project! I'll have to try and figure out what that'll be... probably something fast, like fingerless gloves or something...

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Fiber Monday 232: 13 Weeks of Skull Shawl

We're 13 weeks in on this shawl!

Over the last 13 weeks, I've learned a lot about myself and about using lace weight yarns. First, I've learned that I love lace-weight yarns, but they're very tedious to work with. Second, I've learned that I don't have as much patience as I thought I would. I've also learned that threat weight yarn snaps under the weight of an excitable cat's curious chewing. Thankfully, that was early enough on that I didn't lose much length!

It was a beautiful morning for working, too - 68℉ (20℃) and breezy! My toes were actually cold as I settled in to crochet some more rows on the ol' Lost Souls shawl.

Apologies for the... uh... it looks like a pantyshot and I did not see that when I took the pic...
Oops.

We've reached over 43" (109cm) in width and 19" (48cm) in length on this project with approximately 17 skulls across. My next row will be a brows/increase row. I'm still enjoying this project, and I'm still working on the purple shrug, but I think I'll have to give up on the Micaela shorts because I cannot wrap my head around that pattern's verbiage :| oops.

If you're wondering what my favorite tapemeasure is, btw, it's either the green one I picked up at my local fabric shop (the one I was using last week) or this one:

It's tiny, it's brown, it's retractable.

I love how tiny this Dritz brand tape measure is. My only complaints are that it makes a very loud ticking sound as you pull the tape out and it has about 3 inches (7.6cm) on the Inch side where there's just... nothing.

But being able to push a tiny white button and have the whole tape roll itself up
is so. freaking. useful. I've had to measure things that were 60" wide and believe me, rolling that
by hand would've been a nightmare. Retractable tapes ftw!

I think I will leave you with this peaceful image of the hellion cat taking a nap on the couch as I worked.

And yes, she slept through the flash.

And as a bonus, here's a giant hole in the sidewalk that I walked past yesterday. No reason, I just wanted to take a picture of it. It's maybe 6" (15.2cm) wide and at least 18" (45.7cm) deep.

That sheer wall is the drainage, I think. Wow.

That'll about do it for me today!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Fiber Monday 231: More, More, More

I've been hard at work today, and it should show:

Here's our shawl in all of its unfinished glory!

It's about 39 inches long (that's about 99cm for the rest of the world)

And for length, it's about 20 inches from top to tip (~51cm)

See? I like this measuring tape, btw. It's much more flexible than my white tape.

I'm still working on those shorts from last week, so here's my progress on those:

I still don't entirely understand the instructions, but I'm doing my best...

I'm also reworking a fancy purple silk/merino shrug based off of this pattern, and that's going pretty well right now! I took the repeated motif and stretched it out so that it's a little over 30 inches wide and a little over 16 inches long, which will make a rectangle. I'll sew the ends in by about 5 inches on either side to make a partial tube, and then I'll make some lace to go around the arm holes and the shrug opening :)

That'll about do it for me today, guys.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC