Are your prayers in the morning just squeals of delight?

This scarf was with me for a long time. It started in August 2014, on the trip to Melbourne to see Queen.

Just beginning - I think I ripped and restarted at Canberra airport before leaving. Later I made some good progress with a quiet solo beer before the momentous life event that was QUEEN. (That's the same link, sorry, just had to throw it in again).

If you've been here a while you may remember that once upon a time, I started a red merino Orenburg lace shawl. Although it looks quite simple on paper, I found it quite a tricky pattern to keep straight and to 'read' which row I was up to. There were many bouts of tinking back over the years I was working on it (on and off - mostly off). The last time I mentioned it here, I said "it will be beautiful if I ever finish it". Hmm, ominous. At that time I had finally decided it wasn't going to he intended recipient, and knit something else for her, a shawl that came together much more easily, in the end, and was actually probably more fancy-looking.

Meanwhile I had this Schoppel-Wolle Lace Ball that I had bought as a souvenir one trip to Melbourne. I had been thinking of it as a rainbow colourway, but it's only almost a rainbow: R-O-Y-G-B-I....no violet.  It's called tropical fish, and I love it anyway.

So I thought with all these colours it could do with a simple lace pattern. And I kept thinking that I could probably find an easier honeycomb stitch than the Orenburg one. I didn't save the link, but I'm pretty sure it was this or one very similar to it.



The new stitch proved much easier to keep on the straight and narrow. Then it was just a matter of knitting until it was long enough - and until the colours were nice and symmetrical, with red at both ends and in the middle. I finally finished it a couple of months ago when it was already far too warm to wear it. So now I have a new jumper and a new scarf ready for next winter.