Dragon of Overconfidence

One of my favourite features on Ravelry is definitely the queue. I try to keep mine reasonable, meaning knittable within the average person’s lifespan and every now and then, I’ll find a pattern I thought I wanted to knit four months ago but don’t really fancy anymore. There’s another kind of pattern as well. These I usually put in my favourites because no way could I ever knit something like that / it’s not something I could wear on a day-to-day basis / it’s just a bit too difficult or expensive to get the actual pattern. Dragon of Happiness ticks all those boxes. Anyway, I’d been looking for a lace project for a while, just for variety’s sake. This month I posted a wishlist on the European RAK forum and the very next day, I received this pattern.

CRAZY!

I couldn’t even take a picture of the whole thing without climbing onto a chair. I realized this would be huge at the suggested needle size, so I opted for a finer gauge. Well, I didn’t even own anything smaller than 2.5 circulars, so I bought something else I’ve been pining after for a while. Really tiny needles. Namely HiyaHiyas from Tichiro’s shop. If you’re in Germany, I highly recommend her, the shipping was very fast and the postage is a lot more reasonable than for most online shops. I got the 80cm circs in 1.2 and 1.75. 1.75 for my pattern and 1.2 because I was curious. They are insane. I predict I’ll seriously hurt myself when I first knit with them. Still, looking very much forward to it.

Pattern: check. Supplies: check.

I’ve had this huge cone of thrift store yarn for a while now. It was only 3€ and is either acrylic or some sort of blend. Probably for machine knitting, because it’s really, really fine. I tried that test where you burn a bit of yarn to tell the fiber content, but it’s quite tricky. I might have an underdeveloped sense of smell, but that didn't give anything away… Anyway, it’s very reassuring to know that I definitely won’t run out of yarn for this shawl.

So, I’m all prepared for this massive project. It’s one of those things I don’t expect to finish quickly, I’m aiming for some time around Christmas. The first couple of rows went really fast, but I haven’t gotten to the tricky parts yet. Did I mention it's 23 pages of pattern. What the hell am I thinking? This will be fun.

More spinning.

I’ve finished my second handspun yarn a while back. I can’t remember where I bought the roving, it was a stand at the Ravelry meeting and if I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably 100% Merino. I am in no way an expert though, so the only thing I can say for sure is that it was very soft and the colors are fun. You learn something new with every project, this time it’s that with multicoloured fibers are probably best spun thickly if the individual colours are very different. It’d probably keep them a bit more separate and retain more of the effect that the roving has. Anyway:

It’s not nearly as pretty as the dyed roving was. =(

Confession: I didn’t bother washing or setting the yarn after plying. I probably should, but meh. It didn’t seem to make much difference the first time and it looks quite alright like this. Not sure yet what to do with it, but King of Confidence seems like a good project for beginner’s handspun. I’ll just have to try to spin more at about the same weight. I have no idea how to do that, here’s a comparison between my first two yarns:

It’s getting thinner at least, if not any more even.