M-m-m-MY PAGONA!!!!!!!

Sing that to the tune of "My Sharona" and you'll have what I lived through at the yarn shop for a good month and a half straight!

Backing up a bit, I feel it necessary to say that almost everyone who worked at/visited the yarn shop where I work became enamored, mesmerized and hypnotized by Stephen West.  Who could blame them???  Not only does this man create incredibly beautiful and whimsical knitting patterns, but he's cute as a button as well!

Good God, flippin' beautiful.

Anyways, Stephen's pattern for his "Pagona" shawlette, from West knits book 1 became the popular knit about town.

Considering about 1/2 the clientele and 1/2 off the staff were making this project at any given time the word "Pagona" came up quite often.  Then, the singing began.  One of my favorite clients in the shop began singing "m-m-m-MY PAGONA" (again, sung to the tune of "My Sharona") every time the name came up, and as I mentioned before, due to the pattern's popularity and visibility was about every 2.2 minutes.  Slowly this became nearly Pavlovian, with the entire shop bursting into song, again, every 2.2 minutes.

Now that every one has finished knitting this pattern I have only just recently stopped having nightmares where the song is on a continuous loop in my ears.

So, I'll post the pictures of M-M-M-MY PAGONA, ahem, I mean my completed Pagona shawl.....

The pattern calls for sock weight yarn, and I was thrilled because I still had some left over Ella Rae Lace variegated purple and black that I LOVED!  The pattern also stated that it should be knit on size six circular needles.  When I knit my gauge swatch I decided that it would just be too open a stitch for me, so I downsized my needles to a size 4.  Sadly, this increased my need for more yardage.  Fortunately I was able to find another skein  in my colorway and dye lot at the shop, and thank goodness:  My altered pattern went from requiring 380 yards to nearly 530 to reach the same 14" length before creating the garter stitch border!

I LOVE this pattern due to its versatility and simple appearance.  And its ability for making people sing.

What Do Ye Do With A Drunken Knitter?

Erlye in the mornin'?  Yeah, the whole pirate-y theme really isn't really going anywhere cool, just trying (and failing) to find a clever way to talk about my newly completed 'Shipwreck' Shawl.  I know, I know.....fail.  I'll stop now.....arrrrrr.

Anyways...Tah dah!  My Shipwreck is done!!!

I had wanted to make this shawl for quite a while, and don't really know why I had put it off for so long. It's a great pattern, my first Pi shawl , too!  It has each and every element in a knitting pattern that I adore: lacework, thin yarn and beads!  Yay!

I bought some of my favorite yarn for this, the suggested fingering weight in a soft muted purple by Berroco Ultra Fine Alpaca.  Now the pattern actually suggests buying undyed yarn and dyeing it yourself with a vinegar solution to create a kind of mottled ocean-ey appearance...yeah, not really my thing in this case so I decided to go with a shade that I like, pre-fabricated.

They also suggested buying 5,000 or more size 8 seed beads to put along the "fishnet" outer lace, which I did in a rich amethyst color to match my yarn, but I'll get to that later...

So, I cast on my initial nine stitches on my size 4 DPNs, excited to start this new endeavor.  I tried to put out of my mind the many comments I had read on Ravelry about this pattern being tedious, taking months to finish, having been put on hiatus for an indiscriminate time, blah blah blah....not me...oh no, I wouldn't get weary, I would have this done in no time, those knitters were just whiners.  There was no way I would get bored with this pattern!  Those nine stitches were just too easy!  And the following lacework to create the inner medallion was a cinch....and so exciting, too!

Then I got to knitting the outer lace.

Actually, let me go back and preface my rant with my tale of those 5,000 beads.  I DID buy them,  and fully intended to use them...but of course I'm picky about beading my work.  The pattern says to pre-string your beads, as they are being used in yarn overs (YO) in the pattern.  This makes perfect sense, adding visual interest to what could have been dull fishnet lace.  Well, I pre-strung those suckers....all 5,000 of them.  And began knitting with them.  And realized that in a border of about 80 rows of continuous YO K2Tog, I would have to move 5,000 beads up my yarn about every 6 stitches, which on fingering weight yarn is no easy feat.  AND, to add insult to injury after attempting this for 2 rounds I realized my amethyst beads did not even really show up on my Plum colored yarn.  Sigh.  I decided to cut off the string with all of my beads and continue on after re-connecting my now beadless skein.  Oh well.

Then came the monotony.  The inner lace medallion only led me into a false sense of security in thinking that I would not tire of this pattern.  The consecutive 79 rows of yarn over, knit tow together, yarn over, knit two together, ad infinitum, ad nauseum quickly quelled that.  It wasn't that it was difficult.  In fact, it was mindless...tedious...brain-numbing, one might say.  increasing each round ending with about 1700 stitches.  All of which had to be bound off after finishing what I had thought was a cathartic task.  Gah.

  But in the end it WAS admittedly a lovely shawl.  HUGE, but lovely.  So huge in fat that blocking it was a bit of a pain.  I had to use two whole repeats of the alphabet toddler mats that I utilize to block my projects (and that I utilize to confuse my non-knitting friends who wonder where my baby is, considering my child is now 10).

Here it is blocking:

 It ended up taking 3 weeks to complete, I finished blocking it day before my birthday, and not having to do any more of that border was the best present EVER!

 It did turn out lovely.  It hangs nearly to my ankles, which is a bit large for me but very dramatic, which suits me just fine!  I think next time I will make it again only in a lace weight to suit the small bead size and make it easier to slide up the thread (or possibly add beads at the K2Tog's with the crochet hook method, which I prefer exponentially), and I will probably decrease my needle sizes, both to suit the size of the yarn and the size of the shawl's wearer, as I am only 5'2"!  Oh, and I will NOT wear the second one I make to work, where I snagged it's predecessor a record breaking 5 times on sticky-outey-pointy things in the shop.  For those of you who knit, you know that a snag on a newly completed project produces low guttural cursing, accompanied by trying to pull the snag back into shape, accompanied by much gnashing of teeth.  It's not pretty.

At least the shawl is!