The Haruni

The local knitting group is doing a shawl knit along. I wasn’t there when the details were discussed but when I saw the post on Rav about it I was so excited I cast on almost immediately. The shawl is one that I’ve admired and despised. The Haruni is both intricate with the flower edging and a bit old lady with the flowered edging. It’s gone in and out of my queue several times over the last year, since it was first published. Currently there are 3,000+ projects shown on Ravelry. Clearly I must be the only person having doubts about it. And since the other girls are doing it, I want to join in as well. I dug through the stash and found a red yarn with the right yardage, 460 yards according to the pattern which will make it the largest shawl I’ve knit to date. I picked a merino bamboo blend that I never understood why I bought. Bamboo is not good for socks, and I don’t knit light fingering weight yarn. So it seemed that the pattern and the yarn were meant for each other.

I watched a couple movies with the Boyfriend and Isitt while I worked chart A of the shawl. It was entertaining enough.

Shutter Island was one of the movies. I’m certain that if I had read the book that would have been a total mind f&%k. Having watched the movie I felt it was uneventful. I don’t think they translated it well enough to the screen to be the mental thriller that it could’ve been. But the rainy weather matched our weather outside so I kept watching to the end. And when that ended I realized that I had to knit 4 more repeats of the chart for this shawl. 16 rows of the same diamond/leaf shapes for another 4 more times. Each row longer than the last. I fell asleep at 7:30 last night, I was so board with this knitting.

I woke up refreshed, thinking I’d jump right in and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had made it out to be last night. After 3 rows I took a nap at 8am in morning!!! This is overwhelmingly exciting lace knitting. I’ve now read the comments on other people’s projects about how they omitted the diamond/leaf shapes and did straight stockinet stitch.

Man I wish I had seen that yesterday!!! I’ve completed 2 of the 4 repeats and I know that if I put this down I will dread finishing it and not come back. I think my main problem is that I expect lace to be different on each row and exciting, why else would you need a chart.

I also expect it to change, I don’t think I’ve ever done such a monotonous lace pattern. My pervious lace endeavors had me on a new chart every 20 0r 30 rows not the same pattern for 80 rows. Plus the big payoff is chart B when the flowery part is knit, the intricate and old lady part. Remind me again why I jumped right into knitting this project that I’ve been on the fence for months about? At least I didn’t waste the Madeline Tosh fingering weight yarn I just bought on this. I think I just need a tattoo or something in my face to remind me that I’m not a fan of lace knitting and to stop trying.