Sunday, January 9, 2011

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.

2 comments:

ajc325 said...

Your post is so funny because I'm feeling exactly the same way about the Lace Ribbon Scarf I'm knitting right now!

Seriously?!?! Repeat the SAME pattern for six rows, switch it slightly for another six rows...and repeat this cycle for 80 inches of scarf?!?! I'm going mad.

If I weren't knitting this for another Raveller, I might be tempted to put it down and not return. And I have no excuses because I've knit this before as a gift for a friend and (apparently) didn't learn my lesson.

Sigh...

Anonymous said...

I go back and forth with the "prep rows" so to speak of lace knitting... part of it is nice and mindless and then the other part is like ARGH THIS SUCKS! because it's like how many more do I need? I also have lately seemed to mess up the easy parts far too often....
it's a really pretty pattern tho. Seeing yours and others in the past few weeks is making me contemplate it... again....