I know what I said but...

I know I said I was going to work on just two projects.  I know that it is past time to finish the sweater.  I know that the shawl will probably fall apart with age before it is complete, but I just had to do it.

I started something else.

I had some yarn given to me by a lovely lady this winter.  It was the loveliest heathered blue green of humble origin.  It is so humble that I haven't been able to find it in the Ravelry database.  It was one of those great big huge gigantic 5 pound balls of yarn things (It is the size and weight of the average family cat.) from the local big box store.

Its been tossed around the study because there just was no place to tuck it.  Its size demanded a space all its own and I had none to give it, so that meant I could only do do one thing with it, and that was to knit it asap.

There is so much yarn there the obvious project is a blanket. I tossed the blanket ideas around for a while. Umaro was a top contender. So was Girasole (Follow the Umaro link.  It's there too.).  I looked at all sorts of patterns from the Walker Treasuries too.  I couldn't decide.  

Then I remembered the Hemlock Ring.  In the early days of Ravelry, Jared Flood found a doily pattern on the internet and heavily modified it and reinterpreted it as a blanket.  It was one of the first lace things I coveted.  

That was the perfect type of blanket pattern.  Growing ever larger, I could stop when I was tired of it.  It had no long cast on.  It would look stunning in any sort of yarn, even this most basic and prettiest of green-blue melanges.  

And so, I am begun.  

I'm a little farther than that now and I have loved every stitch of it with no waning yet.  I am well into the feather and fan, and though that might strike some as a very boring ever repeating pattern, each one of the lace patterning rows is different.  For all that there are 4 knit rows between each, it isn't something you can knit in your sleep.  

It isn't hard though and once you know the repeat for the row you are on, its just the same all around. Its the perfect thing outside of  garter stitch.  Simple.  Beautiful.  Rhythmic.

Half done is well begun.  I know I am not half done, not by a long shot, but I am very very well begun.