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.