Today we drove over to the town where Marie lives because she was speaking at a church service, and I was knitting in the car on the way there. I hadn't looked at the manta ray shawl in the sunshine before, and you guys, it is VIVID. A person might need some sunglasses to avoid being blinded by that chartreuse in the sunlight. It's billed as a pop color but it's more like an EXPANSE color or a VISTA color or a VERY PLENTIFUL color.
My chevrons are taking shape and the 70s afghan vibe is building. I was thinking about the structure of the piece, with the hole in the center just right for poking one's head through, combined with the wild colors and the zigzag structure. "It's like an Easter-egg-colored clown collar," I said to Elwood. I thought back to the most recent pattern release, which is constructed in a nifty way but which has a definite circus tent feel, if you ask me. (If you don't have a Ravelry account, this link might work better for you.) "Huh," I said, "clown collars and circus tents. Maybe the designer is pranking us all."
It's a tricky thing, running a mystery knit-along. I once did one where we just made a big triangle, and people in the MKAL discussion group were annoyed about it. But then there was the MKAL where we started by knitting a giant trilobite and then added wedges plus a ruffle, and people in the MKAL discussion group were annoyed that they were making giant trilobites. It should be a little bit mysterious or else people will grumble, but only a little bit mysterious or else people will grumble.
I was lamenting a little to Marie after the church service. "Hm," she said, "that is a pretty bold color choice. But Mom, you do this every time with mystery knit-alongs. You get into the middle and you declare that the designer is writing the pattern specifically to yank your chain." As soon as she said that I remembered posting about it in 2016. (In fairness, that Stephen West shawl wound up being so weird that I gave it away; I also gave away the shawl I made in the next Stephen West MKAL because it was also too big and too dramatic for me. Maybe I am too boring for Stephen West MKALs.) I had forgotten that I said the same thing in 2018 about a shawl that I love and wear frequently, and I wrote pretty much the same post in 2014 about an Ysolda Teague MKAL: things looked too weird in the middle for me to be quite content, and then it all worked out. Marie even remembered my response to my very first MKAL in 2012. "You were NOT happy about knitting that ruffle," she reminded me -- but then I wound up loving both the process and the ruffle.
Huh, this makes twelve years of Jamie saying, "WAIT, THIS EXERCISE IN RELINQUISHING CONTROL IS KIND OF PAINFUL AND I MIGHT REGRET IT." Perhaps I should get back to grousing about the (knitting) pattern so I don't have to contemplate that (behavioral) pattern for very long.
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