Well, I’m making progress on the Foggy, Foggy Dew shawl, though it’s reached the point where things seem to move at less than a snail’s pace. It’s about 15 minutes per plain purl row, 20ish for a pattern row. So this seems to translate to about a repeat per day.

I weighed things yesterday afternoon, before finishing the latest repeat. There were 74 grams remaining in the ball… and the work in progress, including the 60″ Addi Turbos and the beads, weighed 55 grams. Oy. I’d say that there’s about 40 grams of yarn worked up so far… or… roughly 35% of the total yarn.

That would make me about a third done. I can’t stretch the piece out to show it in a triangle at this point; the legs of the triangle would be more than the 60″ needle long, meaning (oh I’m so good at math!) over 5 feet.

The base of the triangle — the top, that’ll be at the neck and shoulders — is about 41 inches across. Not blocked, remember, but still, stretched out to make things sort of visible and roughly ballpark how big this thing is getting.

As I’m working on it, I keep thinking about Sara Lamb’s Anatomy of a Project post from January of this year. She said:

Most times, after the first blush of excitement, there is just the daily effort. Just More. More stitches, more shots, more miles. The real work. The work without surprises, without wonder, where the planning shows in the ease, or lack thereof, of the doing. Sometimes it comes at the body, sometimes it’s the sleeves, the hours of throwing the shuttle, the hemming, the pressing, the blocking, sometimes it’s the endless miles of edging.

Yeah. So I have been pondering what keeps me going through that part. It’s the part that’s work, not play. I think it’s different in every case, with every project, but this time, the truth is, it’s because I want to see the finished object, and look at it, and know how it came out. And then I want to start the next thing with a clear conscience.

I want to see it. And if I want to see it, I have to do it.

This is my first beaded knitting project. I think maybe on the next one I’ll know what the heck I’m doing. While I’m doing this one, I keep thinking about the others. And in fact, with that in mind, I stashed up for some.

Yeah, I’m a stasher. Was there any doubt? But I swear I’ve been stashing the beads with an eye towards specific projects. Look:

Garnets are my birthstone!

So I got some nicer ones, and some irregular ones. I’m looking forward to putting them on this merino/silk yarn.

And these coppery beads are slated for this merino/silk.

With a little luck, these rhodium-plated beads will fit on this merino/tencel.

I’m looking for red and orange beads for the Hot Lava Optim. I haven’t found quite the right thing yet. And I got some little cultured seed pearls, drilled, to put on a cashmere/tussah yarn… but I think they’re too big. I have to let that idea gel.

Having concluded that the soonest I can possibly be done with the Foggy, Foggy Dew shawl is realistically mid-August, I felt gloomy. Odds are I won’t be done with it that quickly; there’s too much else I have to do. That called for some consolation.

“Lovely day for a Genius!” Edward always says. Hah! That isn’t, of course, a Guinness; it’s a Boddington’s. Settling, getting ready for me to drink it. Mmmmm.

Oh, I’ve started actually looking at the heap of WordPress upgrading and tinkering that I need to do. I’ve at least reached the point where I have a shell open on that box and I’m jabbing things in the appropriate directories with the needle-like acuity of my relinquished geekdom. I think it’s reasonably safe to say that this former sysadmin has, in fact, recovered. I wonder if I should stop by the old haunt and let whoever’s left there know. Assuming anybody’s left there.

Anyway, that does mean that coming up in the next… whenever I get to it, there could be all sorts of peculiar blog experiences for my loyal readers, in the event that I decide to eschew any semblance of past professionalism and just make all sorts of changes to live systems and upgrade things in a thoroughly unprincipled manner. You’ve been warned! Any weirdnesses, though, will be short-lived. I promise.