The final analysis:
I think I love everything about this project but Chart B, Starlight Lace. I kept giving it the benefit of the doubt, but now that it’s blocking I have to say, I don’t love that pattern. It looks good at a distance but it sort of breaks up visually when you get closer. It’s also a PITA to knit (and my finished shawl shows some signs of the struggle). However, looking at the bigger picture, it is an integral part of the “celestial” theme of the shawl and the design as a whole would not be the same without it.
5/12/10: Whew, finished! That was the longest home stretch ever. I liked the edging, even though it took forever. More pix after blocking.
4/30/10: Coming down the home stretch. I’ve finished about a sixth of the edging. I like this pattern so much I’m thinking about adapting it as an edging on my Featherweight cardigan. It takes a while to memorize, but now I’ve got it down. Too bad I swatched it so long ago, I had to relearn it.
3/18/10: I bought a gram scale and was stunned to discover that after 6 repeats of the fountain lace chart, I still had 46 grams (46%) of my yarn left! So I guess I can work the full 9 repeats before I go on to the edging.
3/9/10: Getting close to starting the diamond edging. I’m swatching the edging with sock yarn and big needles, just to get familiar with it. The pattern isn’t too hard but I’m anxious about handling the project when I have to to back and forth with the whole shawl on my lap. I’m also not sure if I have reserved enough yarn for the edging. I’m going to go with only 6 repeats of the fountain lace instead of 9, because I don’t have as much yarn as the pattern calls for, and I used bigger needles, too. Always that little frisson of danger when you substitute yarn.
2/1/10: starting second repeat of chart C, Elongated Fountain Lace. It’s going really well, as it is a much easier pattern than the starlight lace. The piece is getting big enough now that I’m considering switching to my 60” cable.
1/18/09: I had shifted the markers the wrong direction on the second Row 1, I moved them left when they should have gone right, so everything was shifted two stitches from where it should have been. After I figured that out and fixed it, things are looking much better.
1/17/10: frogged back to row 6 of starlight lace. This time I was able to pick up and go forward. However, now I’m starting row 3 of the 2nd repeat and it isn’t coming together as expected. Something wrong in the marker shifting between repeats? Very puzzling. This pattern is the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to work, the chart is disjointed and the marker shifts are treacherous.
1/15/10: Yikes! I put this project down for a couple of days to swatch some other projects and when I picked it back up, I couldn’t tell which row I was on. Starlight lace is really tricky that way. I can usually read lace OK, but this time I got it wrong. After 4 rows I could see how fractured the pattern was. I tried to tell myself it looked “modern” or “abstract” but finally admitted I couldn’t leave it like that.

So then I spent an hour this morning inserting a retroactive lifeline after row 13 (only row I thought I could see well enough to insert a needle into all the stitches, with the added bonus that it has 1/3 fewer stitches, 192 instead of 288), but after frogging back to that lifeline, I can see that I made some boo-boos, and I’m not sure what to do now. Project is in timeout for now, while I weigh my options. The last lifeline I inserted correctly was before the beginning of the Starlight section, and I really don’t want to go back that far, I’ve lost a whole inch as it is.

Lessons learned:

1. More lifelines! With this many markers I hesitated to do the lifelines; with the Options needle trick a lifeline is “easy” except for the fact that it goes inside all the markers. However, my little rubber band markers are cheap; I can just cut them or leave them on the lifeline and add more.
2. If you loose your place, drop a lifeline right then and there before proceeding with your best guess.
3. Make a written note on the instructions whenever you quit for the night, even if you mean to get right back to the project, because you never know what other events (like the arrival of delicious new yarn in the mail, begging to be wound and swatched) might intervene.

1/7/2010: Frogged my older Featherwight Cardi project (too sheer, needles too big for the yarn) and started the Firmaments. Now I can see that this yarn really wanted to be a shawl all along. In lace, I don’t have to worry so much about keeping the stitches even, or maintaining my gauge. The yarn is happier and so am I.

10/28/09 - squeezing in a little of this between other projects. It would be a good TV knitting project if the yarn weren’t so thin. No rush to get through this, it will be a summer sweater, so cobwebby and thin.

Centolavaggi yarn may be too thin, but I’ve decided to give it a shot.