Knit My Dog

It involves international travel, dress shopping and yarn, of course.

Last summer on our vacation to Ontario, we visited a yarn shop in Picton and I bought some great alpaca / silk blend from some local alpacas. I thought I'd make a shawl.

In January, I finally started this. I was diligent about knitting at least one pattern repeat each night and was happily working along. I was never sure exactly how much yarn I had, yardage-wise, so I made some estimates after weighing each skein. You see, this was locally spun in Picton, Ontario and had no tags whatsoever. After some fancy math, I determined that after two skeins were complete, I would stop on the body and switch to the border, using my third and final skein for the border.

Then I put the shawl down and started my love affair with my Perfect Sweater (which is done, by the way, just needs the sleeves set in). You see, I had to put THAT project down because the shawl suddenly became all-encompasing. My parents are are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in less than two weeks and we (their kids) are having a fancy dinner party to honor the occassion. My mother has been asking me for more than a month what I am wearing. She's all about the outfit. Me, I hate shopping and usually refuse to go to the mall. It sucks the life blood out of me just walking in the doors. Last weekend my sister convinced me that we needed to go to the mall to go dress shopping. So I went, kicking and screaming. After two hours of trying on everything in Macy's, I grabbed two dresses off a rack for our final trip to the dressing room. Wouldn't you know, one fit me perfectly, and one fit my sister great too. And mine was on super sale, so I didn't feel too bad spending the money. How does this relate to my shawl story? Well, I need something to wear over the dress, a small jacket or sweater, or perhaps a lace shawl. And the shawl I'm knitting is the perfect color to go with the dress.

Last week I put down the Perfect Sweater and changed gears to get back into the lace knitting. I happily finished the second skein, did some more math to figure out the number of stitches for the border, and embarked on the border knitting. I must have been hallucinating when I figured out the amount required for the border, because look at where I am:

I've knit across the bottom, and three quarters of the way up one side. I'm not even halfway around the shawl. And I have about two yards of yarn left. I discovered this on Sunday evening after some great knitting time this weekend. I looked into my bag and the yarn was almost gone!

That's when I started to panic. Less than two weeks until the party, no more yarn, yarn purchased in Canada, one year ago, and it's local, handspun! What's a girl to do? Well, I went to the yarn room and found the receipt. That is no easy feat. I have absolutely NO system for storing yarn or logging purchases. The only reason I still have it is that the woman put the reciept in the bag with my yarn and the bag is still stuffed somewhere upstairs. So I called. And I emailed. And I waited.

She called me back last night! She remembers the exact yarn from my description, and she has FOUR skeins left! Really, what are the chances? So now I just have to wait for the Canada Post to bring it to me. Do you think it will be here in time to complete the shawl for the party? I'm hoping that the money spent for priority shiping is worth it.