Spring Mystery 2010 (Flora) – Complete

I finished the Spring Mystery Shawl this week, and even managed to block it in a timely manner. Pre-Blocking, it looked like this:

After blocking, it looked like this:

I’ve said it before, but I love, love, love what blocking does for lacework. The beads really, really add a nice touch to the shawl. This is the first beaded project I’ve managed to finish, and I do wonder what it’ll be like to wear.

The only other beaded project I’ve ever done is currently in this stage:

That’s Pink Lemon Twist’s Mystery Stole 4, and it’s been waiting for me to get around to grafting it for about 6 weeks now. *g* I was gonna do it yesterday, but I had a crap night’s sleep, and I somehow think that much Kitchener is going to require that I be well rested and … patient. Maybe that’ll be next weekend’s project.

Which mean right now, I pretty much have nothing I really want to do on the needles. It feels…weird. I signed up for the GoddessKnits 2010 Anniversary Shawl, but I haven’t enough laceweight in my stash, so that’s on hold until I get some. I think I may hit the Knitter’s Frolic in a couple of weeks to get some.

Mysteries

I’ve really enjoyed, over the last few years, doing Mystery projects. Shawls and/or stoles, they’ve been fun.

I’m starting to think, though, that they’re a little too stressful for me. I’m looking at the new Goddessknits Anniversary Shawl, which I’d really love to do – the Mandela (2008’s anniversary mystery) turned out soo cool, and I’m actually wearing last year’s Anniversary Shawl as I type this – but I just find them too stressful.

With mysteries, I have this almost compulsive need to “keep up”. This meant, with the last one (Goddessknits Spring Mystery), I managed to finish each clue before the next came out – each week, that’s more work, since there are more stitches in each clue. The first week, I had to knit clue 1 twice, since I screwed up the way the nupps were formed. The second week, I was out of town for the weekend, and so had to get the clue done on weeknights. And weeks three and four, it seemed like I never set the knitting down – I didn’t do housework, I put off some website stuff I’d promised to do – I did nothing with my free time but knit. Clue 5, since it’s the last clue, doesn’t come with a built-in deadline, so it’s a week and half after release, and I’m about halfway through the clue. It’s much more relaxing this way.

This is supposed to be a hobby, not a chore!

This is what my Spring Mystery looked like after end of Clue 3, by the way. It gets harder to take good pictures of shawls like this, as they get bigger and bigger. I do like the beading on this one, though, and the colour is a really great true purple. The beads are gilt-lined opal, and shimmer nicely. After clue 4, you can see the pattern and beads a little better, though.

So I guess what I need to figure out is how to do one of these mysteries without feeling a need to keep up. I like doing them, I like the result, but I don’t like the self-imposed deadlines. Maybe I need to deliberately not pick up the first clue for the next one until the second clue is out? That might keep me from going crazy. *g*