Ball One

Yesterday, I knit on my ever more lovely Shetland hap in the delicious Jaimieson's of Shetland Ultra.  It is a little bit of heaven and heaven is always a lovely place to visit.  It doesn't look like a whole lot yet.  Just a triangle of pretty yarn knit up but it is going so fast.

It took no knitting time at all to get here, to the end of ball one.  It's a nice kind of knitting.  Start each and every row with a single yarn over loop and it slowly grows into something so much more.  Lovely.  Hypnotic in many ways and oh so comforting knitting. 

That first corner really can't tell me much about the size that the shawl will be yet.     I wish it could but only time and more knitting will get me there.  I have seven balls for the center, though ideally, I would like to have some of the natural white in the edging as well, and I am currently debating if somewhere among all of this

I will find enough yarn to make the size I want.  You would think so, wouldn't you.  

I had the whole thing planned out when I bought the yarn.  I had to wait two nights for the store to reopen from their annual holdiay, and while I waited in my comfortable room, I dreamed and planned.  

I know that the number one thing I wanted to be sure of was that it was not too small.  There is nothing worse than a beautiful shawl, no matter its shape, that is only close to right. I have had several of those.  I have a lovely North Hamptom Neckerchief  that used 3 skeins of Silky Wool.  I love wearing it, but it's use is limited because it is just barely a shawl.  It only barely covers and ties as a head gear.  I ought to have had a full second skein of the darkest colour.  I have a lovely Oscilloscope that should have been larger too.  I wear both of these but they need to be pinned to stay on my shoulders and a really good shawl ought to sit nicely open or pinned close. I would far rather deal with a very generous shawl, like my First Einband shawl  than a too small shawl. A shawl of Jamieson's of Shetland Ultra deserves to be a really good shawl.

I am kind of wondering if, in my mind, when I purchased the yarn, I was thinking of making a half hap.  That is very very possible because on that same epic adventure, I bought enough Brigg's and Little Sport to make a nice big warm shawl to repeat what I made for Olga's grandmother.   I may have bargained with myself that I could knit both of these shawls in the same pattern if the one with the very, very special yarn was a half hap.  

I have no idea what I was thinking.  I could go back and see if I left a note on the blog, but I could also just go with it.   When I get to three balls of yarn, I will pretty much know.  If three balls of natural are not wide enough to make the shawl I want to wear then half hap!   

In a lot of ways, this whole process is why I keep knitting.  Here I am, one ball in, and knitting, even a plain garter stitch middle of a shawl still is a huge and unknown adventure.