I’ve never seen Lord of the Rings. I know, I know. High fantasy just isn’t my genre, I guess. Regardless, my spouse and I just planned a rather short-notice trip to Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand. I always promised that if we went to New Zealand I’d watch the movies, so this is going to be my airplane and movie project. Feels appropriate to knit a LotR-inspired on our way to Hobbiton and Weta Workshop.
I still don’t know the deadline for fiber arts entries for the state fair, but my goal is to enter this when it is done.
Also, adding beads to the pattern. Beads instead of wraps, beads instead of bobbles (we’ll see how those block out, i’m not optimistic), and some additional beads to give it some feeling of design consistency. n.b. it wouldn’t need the extra beads if i hadn’t added them in the first place—the design is perfectly consistent as written.
I modified the PDF for myself and did some math. I’m using 1,296 beads. Always gotta be extra, Aki 
March 17, 2024
The deadline for submission is April 6th?!
March 24, 2024
Frantically knitting to get this done before the state fair deadline. Started ball three in the wee hours of the morning today. I was kind of lukewarm on this pattern at first but it is really coming together, can’t wait to see what it looks like blocked. Hope my bobbles work.
Just finished planning out the beading today. If I had done wraps instead of beads, I’d be beading the heart-looking shapes in chart 5.
March 25, 2024
this thing is gonna be #$%^&* huge.
March 30, 2024
i adamantly dislike the beading choices I made for charts 4 & 5, i should have either stuck to only replacing wraps with beads or spent more time comparing the charts to photos of other people’s FOs. If it wasn’t 5 days to state fair deadline, I’d rip back countless hours of work. i’m like 15 rows from being done.
March 31, 2024
Started ball 4 last night. 5 rows left, plus bind-off, plus blocking, plus photos, plus putting together state fair entry. i can do this, right?
April 1, 2024
3am. Bound off. This bitch is huge.
April 2, 2024
Soaked and then blocked yesterday. While it was soaking, I read the yarn company’s blocking recommendation: spray with ice water. What. How on earth is lace supposed to open up that way? Anyway, wired & pinned it down yesterday. Today felt like some of the edge lace wasn’t opened up enough, so I sprayed with ice water and added more pins. I feel like worst case, it doesn’t change. That’s fine as long as it dries before the golden hour tomorrow for submission photos.
April 3, 2024
I feel like I over blocked the body and under blocked the edging. How.
August 10, 2024
BEST IN DIVISION (knitting) CA STATE FAIR 2024!!!!!!!
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