Mystery Stole

So. As I mentioned in my last post, I have joined the Mystery Stole 3 knit-along. So far, I've been so totally overwhelmed with the sheer volume of email I've been slogging through, that I haven't really had a chance to really interact with the group.

I did buy yarn. I went to two knitting stores here in Ottawa and could find absolutely no white or cream coloured laceweight yarn! There was black in one store, but I don't wear black as a rule, and knew that I would never use a black stole. So, owing to the fact that I was already behind by 2 clues, and it was Saturday, and I had no car, and it was raining, I opted for something a bit heavier. This is gorgeous stuff. Silk DK weight. It's impossible to get a good idea of just how luscious this yarn is from the picture. Hopefully, the sheen will show up in future stole shots.

I've never tried beaded knitting before. Mainly because I'm a big fat chicken. So when I saw that beads were an option for this pattern, I jumped at the chance to try it out. Let me tell you, for someone who has never played with beads, a place like the Sassy Bead Company is a little scary. Nevertheless, I prevailed. My goal was seed beads for this project and only this project. These are what I came away with:

Pretty peachy beads that bring out the warm peachy tones in the vanilla yarn. Hopefully I won't lose too many. I know for a fact that at least 2, if not three, have vanished into the black hole that tiny things like this get lost in.

So I got the yarn and the beads. But the yarn is bigger than the pattern calls for, so I did the unthinkable (for me anyway) and I did the swatch. Good thing too, because this is on 4.5 mm needles and it's still pretty dense. I like it though, the YOs are clear and the stockingette is not too tight without being messy. That's how I'm going.

Sorta, I did the swatch. I did the 3 rows of garter, and the pattern once but didn't bother with the garter rows again, and there was no way I was going to cast this off. I'm far too paranoid about running out of yarn. This is something I have been dealing with for as long as I've been working fibre crafts. It's why there are so many single balls of yarn sitting in my stash. If I ever get on Ravelry, that will become much clearer.

So. That's the start of my Mystery Stole journey. In all honesty, I just finished knitting clue #1 before I came on to write this post, but the light was gone. I'll take pictures tomorrow. I figure due to the overwhelming numbers of people in the blogosphere participating in this knit-along, there are zillions of photos of Mystery Stoles in progress floating around out there, so my plan is to blog about my stole when I finish a clue. Hopefully there will be other knitting happening as well to fill out the gaps. Now, I'm off to play with some string (aka acrylic yarn).