This is the prototype of this pattern. The final pattern has a number of changes in it.

This is a test knit of my Fire Dance design in Dragon Fire with AB beads.

I need 1875 yards, no sleeves.

You have 1875 yards of Marici Dragon Fire on order. You also have those Toho trans-rainbow AB beads in various red and orange colors on order, more than enough for the project.

Do this on Dragon Fire. Run the beads against the color. Well, maybe I need to check the beads that way first. I may want to switch to just gold beads. Not sure.

Wait until July 1 to cast on so you can do this as part of the Heere Be EarthFaire contest/KAL.

I’m digging through the bead stash. Looks like I can go with SL Dark Gold AB. Or track the colors, either in silver lined or transparent AB. I’ve laid the beads against the yarn and will go back and look at it again tomorrow. I think I’m going to track the colors, and use the trans rainbow beads.

OK, the beads will be that trans rainbow series by Toho. light hyacinth, light siam ruby, siam ruby, ruby. There is also a tube of light orange AB that fits nicely between the light hyacinth and the light siam ruby. I like the colors better when the orange goes on the orange and the red on the red etc. The beads are not going to be very visible in the photos, though. Still, they will show, though fairly subtly, in the shawl. I suppose I could have done it with the silver lined dark gold AB to make them show up better, but I like the other colors better.

I need to make pre-starting photos.

I have just spent the afternoon transcribing just a part of the chart from Excel to StitchMastery. I want to finish that so I can work from what will be the final chart. Of course, I found some things that needed changing, and will need swatching, too.

Well, I finished that transcription, but it won’t be very useful for producing the text form. It is throwing away the custom stitches. It lacks stitch forms for beading after creating the stitch, though I suppose I could have moved them to the row after. Hate to do that, as it creates less chance to detect and fix errors. I’m coloring the beaded stitches, but that won’t work for the autogenerated text. I spent way to much time this afternoon redoing custom stitch creation, and finally gave up. I’ve printed out the image to knit from, along with the Excel version. That way I can check it as I go.

I was up until nearly 2:00AM trying to get the pattern printed in a nice format. I now finally have that done. Time for the pre-cast on photo.

Cast on.

At row 47, I think I have a bit of a mess that needs changed. That affects through row 61. I’ve made a first try, and will test the try in the morning.

Ok, that works. I’m probably good through row 62 at least.

Well, so much for that! I just did another major rework of this. I am spending more time on the rework of the pattern than I am knitting. So far I’ve been able to “fall forward.” I have not frogged or tinked back, other than to fix a missing bead 8 rows back. The old way of doing things has remained, at least up to row 75. That means I get to knit it again.

The last 4 rows do not look very good. Time to tink back and revise. The 6 rows back from that will look ok, though the slant of the decreases will get changed in the pattern to make them look better.

OK, the revision is done on paper and swatched. Now to tink back to row 93 and make the rest right. The changes in rows 83-91 are going in the next time I knit this, but not this time. I swatched them to make sure they are OK. Also, they show up again later in the pattern, so they will be properly tested by then.

Position: Row 111

Argh! I need to frog back to row 87. That flame pattern is just awful!

I am going to work on the jacket in Ling for a while. Keep it at least one motif ahead of the shawl. The Ling withstands frogging MUCH better than the Marici does.

OK, the frog back is done. I didn’t have lifelines, so I put a safety pin through a few loops just above where I wanted to stop, put it all in a plastic bag to catch the beads and stitch markers, and pulled the loose end. Then I picked it up, picked up the live stitches, and did one complete slip and repair round. Just slipping stitches and making repairs as I went. Next slip round will place stitch markers and check it all for correctness. This was a little tricky, since Marici sticks to itself, and that can cause some stitches to drop when they should not. There were only a few of those, and I think I got them all.

Serves me right for working without a lifeline in a test knit. I should put in lifelines at the end of each motif until I’m sure of them. However, I think all of the motifs are now tested. I swatched the one I just frogged back for. Could that be the light at the end of the tunnel? Or just an oncoming train!

Most of my motifs seem properly tested now. Maybe this will become easier.

And in the middle of row 111, my Maine Coon cat jumped in my lap, carefully avoiding the knitting. He truly understands “stay off the knitting” and he tries hard. But, he walked across the yarn feeding in and tangled it around his two hind legs. I tried to untangle him, and he jumped off my lap and walked away, yarn unspooling like crazy behind him. I reached, and the recliner I was in, fully reclined and locked, dumped forward, knocking over the lamp and knocking things off the knitting table. The cat kept walking. By the time I had untangled the mess enough to do something about it, he had detached himself from the yarn, and there were just yards of it to wind off the floor, well mixed with cat hair. All back to normal now, but it was a bit hairy there for a little while! And I did not drop any stitches, which amazed me.

I just had an idea for a smaller version of this shawl. It is now written up, and needs tested. It will require 1250 yards and 3300 beads. I can probably test it with the Ling left over from NBC and some bright gold beads. Or silver? Or chartreuse?

I decided to put it on long needles for a first look at the results. I like what I’m seeing. A lot! I took progress photos. Does Ravelry have an automatic bead erasor, or what? Those beads show up just fine in the photos on my screen, or even over on flickr.

Well, on to the knitting! Now I’m all charged up over this one.

If I want this done before the end of July, I’d better double my knitting time per day. Going too slowly, only just under 40% done.

Got past 50%, got some bright ideas for changes, found some errors, wrote up the changes. I think I’ll finish it with the old version of the pattern, trying to finish by the end of July. Then start again with the new version after I transcribe it to Stitch Mastery, and doubtless make some errors in the process. I DO have several more version of this on my projects page to allow for this.

I’m now into the final beaded section, 60% done, and wonder of wonders, I’m knitting and beading faster. Practice, I think. Will this be an FO by the end of July? Stay tuned!

65% done and 2400 more beads to go. :-]

I have 3 knitting days left. Two of my knitting days got eaten by the dentist and other such joys. There is no way I’m going to make this into an FO in that time. I have 33 rows to go, each over 1000 stitches long, and about 1600 beads left to place.

All this sitting and knitting has given me ideas for improving this. I took a couple of hours last night and wrote them up. I also measured my stitches per yard on the 4th skein, and found it was 63.88. I had been calculating yardage requirements on 68.5 stitches per yard, so quite a few stitches had to come out to meet yardage requirement. I did that, too. Now I have a small shawl and a large shawl using the same diagrams. There is still some work to do on the sleeves of the beaded jacket version. I’ll do that after I get good measurements of the lengths and after this one is done. Once I know my gauge overall, I can do a better job of planning sleeve lengths.

This is looking pretty hopeless, as I’ll have to do over 10,000 stitches per day to get this done. However, I’m going to go for it. I might make it, or I might not. It will be interesting to try. I want to make it with time to spare for a blocking photo, perhaps even dry, though probably not.

I put it on lots of needles this morning and pinned it out. I was afraid it would ruffle too much, but it looks like it can be pinned out at the points. It could do with much less of the “puffs of smoke” motif. The stems of the flames could be shorter. And the flames seem rather large and plain. Also, the last doubling of stitches should not have happened. Maybe a slow increase there. And perhaps 8 fold instead of 6, though it may be fine as is at 6. I’ll have to think about that. If I get the “puffs” down, and don’t do that last doubling, I’ll have more yarn for more rows and can make that last section more interesting. And, I want to whole thing to swirl more, too. Lots of revisions for the next go.

Now to get back to finishing it.

Yielded to temptation. I just spent an evening doing a major rewrite to make the changes I wanted after the pin out. I even added an error checker to my excel code, which will make this go much faster. I’m not quite done with the rewrite, but I know what I want.

OK, this will be a WIP for the EarthFaire contest in July. Not enough time to finish. Early August should see it done. Then I’ll work on the updated pattern, and do it again, probably in Brandywine on Marici Lace. Perhaps on Twisted Fiber Arts Blaze on Ariel, though I have a bit too much of that for this, and I’d lose some of the gradated colors. I suppose I could make it larger, though, and I’d need to do a stitch count swatch to calculated the yardage closely.

At row 207 I decided to make a push to finish it this weekend. A delivery person arrived, and I put it down without putting stich holders on the ends of the needles. Then I picked it up to show it off, and a couple hundred stitches slid off the needle. I’ve caught them up to avoid runs, but there are plenty of errors. I used a 9” US 0 circular needle to pick them up, and it is a jewel! Anyway, tomorrow I’ll start working forward, looking for errors and repairing and placing stitch markers as I go. Shouldn’t take more than a few hours, and then I’ll be moving forward again. With the beads, this one takes about 2 hours per beaded row, and a half hour per resting row, so it is slow work. The bind off will be at row 225. That means about 22 hours work plus the repairs to finish this one.

OK, repairs complete, three more rows done. Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday put together might see it finished.

I keep getting bright ideas for how to calculate yarn requirements and transitions for TUS gradiances. Good thing I did. Several of the designs would have run out of yarn due to the “whole row” nature of transitions. Overall enough yardage, but there is wastage, and an amazing amount of it, as a result of the transitions. I was OK for my own stitches per yard rating, but when I put in a 10% fudge factor to make sure others would be OK, the yardage was too tight. I’ve now done 5 versions of this shawl and calculated yardage requirements and transition points for all of them. There is a beaded evening jacket, a large circular shawl, a large semi circle, a small circular shawl, and a small semi circle.

I am now doing a “look ahead” calculation to determine transition points. “If I transition at this row, how many yards of the previous skein do I need to finish the transition with it?” It was a real skull cracker to figure out how to do it, too. Excel saved my hide on this one.

My calculations give me reason to suspect I will run out of yarn before I run out of shawl on this test knit. I may just cut it short as a result. I do have more of the yarn, but it would use a lot of it, and I have more projects I want to use it for.

I’m entering the bindoff row, and it looks like I will give out of this skein of yarn in this row somewhere. I think I can use the previous skein to finish, and it won’t be noticeable. Tomorrow. I’m too tired to decide which stretchy bindoff to use! Knit somewhere between 5000 and 6000 stitches today and placed over 100 beads as well.

Knitting complete, ends woven in. She is in her bath soaking, and will be blocked tomorrow. Photos to follow.

OK, she is drying and in blocking. I like the results. Only the outer part needs changed, and I have that in my design now.