Ok, Mondays are for shawls too.

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Originally uploaded by spinknit

It was good to get a comment from aunty tink, because without her, the Mystic Waters would be in the Bonnybrook Sewer Treatment Plant, being *recycled*. I was at the end of my rope with the first chart (never having used a chart before); I'd frogged about 10 times, and just chucked the whole thing. Thank goodness she is a lace guru. With a few suggestions and a new yarn choice I was good to go (hey, she hooked me up with fridge magnets and a cookie sheet.. it was all I needed for a fresh start).

I appreciate the positive feedback, because what aunty tink didn't say was there there are quite a few glaring errors in that piece of lace. And you know what? I don't care. I'm going to call them intuitive design features, and I'm going to be thrilled with the shawl. Maybe your lace has a few intuitive features too; and you know what, it's OK.

Amy gave me another lace hint; and that is, don't point out your errors. No one will notice them. I didn't take her advice this one time, because I wanted to show you that fabulous doesn't have to be perfect.

I'm sticking with that.

Ok.. aunty tink again. I was reading her blog and I saw that she had entered a scarf (which now hangs in Make One, tho the first place ribbon isn't attached) in the Calgary Stampede. This got me interested, because I've been wanting to enter my work in *something*, but a venue the scale of the Stampede hadn't crossed my mind. While looking at aunty tink's Ravelry queue, I spied the Heartland Lace Shawl, by Evelyn Clark. This pattern was originally submitted by Evelyn into a Buffalo Gold contest via Wild Fibers Magazine, and you can email Buffalo Gold for the charts. I did so, and had them within hours... hence, about 50 rows of lace completed in Trekking XXL Fingering weight. It's a completely inappropriate yarn choice, but I'm going to make this one to wear.

My point is that I think this would be a very suitable choice to knit for the Stampede this year (using Bison). If AT isn't thinking of the very same thing, I think I might give it a whirl. Why the heck not?

So that was my evening. I laced.