Bloody lovely

Some time ago Helen gave me a skein of pink sweetgeorgia merino silk lace. The colourway was "oxblood", but I think it would have been more appropriately named "candyblood" or something. I don't know what kind of oxen they have in Vancouver, but where I come from their blood ain't pink.

Alright fine, so I've never seen actual ox blood, so technically I don't really know what colour it is, unless the colour is in reference to something other than literally the blood of an ox. Is it a flower or something? If so, then who named the flower?  Any way you spin it, people who come up the colour names have got to be a few stitches short of a sweater.

So, back to the point. This yarn was beautiful, but I couldn't see myself wearing anything made with it. Then my mom saw it and loved it, so of course I knew I had to make her something with it. Thus began the search for the perfect pattern.

I wanted to make a lacy stole that my mom could wear in the summer. There is no end to lacy stole patterns, and narrowing it down was tough.  I didn't want anything too lacy or traditional looking (read: old fashioned) because although my mom may be retired, she's no old lady.  Finally I found one I liked, the Nefertiti wrap. So I bought and downloaded the pattern, opened it up, and balked when I saw the number of pages and lace charts involved.  The pattern is 15 pages long.  There are 18 different lace charts. This was not the lovely and interesting (but relaxing) spring knitting I had envisioned, so that idea was scrapped before I could even muster up a cast on.

Next I found the Seascape Shawl. Pretty and fairly simple compared to the Nefertiti wrap, so I cast on right away.  All was well.

That is, until I spread it out to look at how the pattern was developing.

Do you see it?

Alright fine, since apparently part of my mind never left junior high, I looked at this lovely wrap and all I could see was boobs.  Maybe it was partially the colour, since I didn't notice it in the pattern, and while I'm all for support of breast cancer research, I didn't think I needed to give my mom a giant breast cancer ribbon.  I pointed it out to all of my knitting friends and they agreed with me, so I knew it had to go.  There's a chance that had I kept knitting this, the overwhelming boobage would have disappeared, but once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.  I didn't even want to finish knitting the pair.

So the boob scarf got frogged and I was back to square one.  Except that fortunately by this point I had a pretty good idea of what was out there and what I didn't want.  So I went even simpler, and decided to knit my mom something that I'd been planning to make for myself but just don't have the right yarn for it yet.  I picked the Clapotis and before I even cast on, I knew this was the right choice.

It was a wonderfully simple, relaxing, rhythmic knit.  Although, I admit, rather time consuming.  700 yards of lace weight takes a long time to knit no matter what the pattern is.  Once it was finished though, I didn't even have to block it since the drape was already amazing.  So I guess that was a time-saver?

I think my mom likes it, although I don't think she's worn it yet, what with the never-ending heat wave. If she doesn't end up wearing it though, maybe I'll take it back.  I can over-dye it or something.

;)