So Ashley and I were both bad daughters last year. Actually that may be too harsh. Maybe someone forgot to tell us that our Christmas knitting should really have been started in July or maybe we both just grossly overestimated how fast we knit. In any case, both of our mothers received prettily packaged Christmas presents, from under the tree, containing half finished projects still on their needles.
At first there was confusion ("Am i expected to finish this?" clearly etched on both of their faces) and then amusement and relief as we explained that while my niece had patiently counted down the twenty five days preceding Christmas on her advent calendar, those days had flown past us grown ups in a blur of a 1000 started tasks, only finishing the ones that were flashing maniacally at us in extra bright white LED'S.
So here we are, it's the first day of February and I'm only just putting the finishing touches on Mom's Bella Vista shawl. I'm calling it Bella Vista 2.0 because, to tell you the truth, I've been putting most of my knitting hours in on the 6:12 AM GO train and at a critical moment I either fell asleep reading an instruction or lost my spot in the pattern altogether. By the time I realised that I had missed an important row the prospect of tearing the shawl back had been a daunting one. Have you guys seen this pattern? It's a crescent shape shawl designed by one of our favourite designers Anthony Casalena. The crescent is shaped by short row wedges highlighted by some really pretty stitch designs. The row I missed is just below the green wedge where the speckle starts again. Can you tell? (My mom can't either! Shhh...)
In the end, I opted for some highly complex pattern modifications based on math that makes logical sense in my head and when carefully executed but is virtually impossible to explain at all. If you're relatively new to knitting I'm going to recommend not doing this. Take the time and double back. That I managed to pull this off actually amazes me.
The other thing to note about this pattern is it takes aprox 540 - 550 metres of yarn which is more than one skein of Comfort Sock but not quite two. I knit this pattern with one of RSBSY's Sock Kits which came with the speckle and that beautiful blue and since I always want MORE COLOUR I decided to throw in some other extras I had lying around. Recognize that orange? I used two shades that I had left over from my Color Affection shawl. The green I just added for the fun of it.
So this is her, Bella Vista 2.0 in all of her glory. I said I wanted to knit a second one and I did. Now I need a third, but the next one is going to be for me!
