I went to OFFF and all I got was this lousy... oh, wait.

We're the unfortunately owners of a leak in the water main coming into the house. The plumber's outside right now digging a big hole in the grass (I wonder what's more expensive: the increased cost in the water bills or how much it'll actually take to fix the leak. My short term vote is with the water bills) so it seems like a great time for a...

Post About Llamas!

I went to the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival last Saturday. My very first fiber show. I'm not a spinner and the show was definitely geared to the raw fiber crowd, but there was still lots of animals and yarn to appreciate.

(First as a preliminary: am I the only person bothered by the juxtaposition of "oh, cute lamb fleeces" and "mmm, tasty lamb kebabs"? I swear, the line for the lamb-sausage/kebab/rib booth was 3 dozen long.)

Back to the llamas: the Llama Barn was an enormous roofed enclosure with a big fenced area and some bleachers so you could watch. All the llamas were at the back. In the middle: the Llama Obstacle course. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the llamas to show you: they were all dolled with beauty queen hairdos. Some of them had ruffs like poodles, some had hair long on the back and shaved on the belly and flanks, with cute little puff rings around the bottom of their legs. That must a fun task, figuring out a 'do for your llama for the big competition.

Bad picture of a llama, but you can see his (her?) careful coif.

Anyway, the Llama Obstacle Course: A bunch of teenagers, one by one, would lead their llamas through various Llama Activities: walk over a bridge; step all the way into a circle and stay there; carry a pack of lead weights on their back; jump over 12-inch-high fences. My favorite: Climb through the side door of a mini-van, then out the back door. Yes, there was a mini van parked in the middle. With llamas ducking and walking through it.

Other obstacles for llamas:

• walk by a blowing fan


• stand by a person who then Opened An Umbrella (do llamas not like umbrellas?)


• lead the llama over a plastic tarp (the llama I saw really DID NOT like doing this)


• stand by a person who ran her hand slowly over the llamas back

Contrary to popular report, I did not see any llama spit at all.

The alpacas: unbelievably cute. Surpassing bunny-cuteness, even. There were LOTS of alpacas: huacayas mostly, as those are the bulk of the herd that were allowed into the US. Some alpaca facts at this site. They sit like my cat does, with their legs folded demurely underneath.


Rabbits, alpacas, llamas, goats, and a bazillion different types of sheep. I had no idea sheep could get so big. The goats made all these worried-sounding naaaaaas most of the time.

Sheep!

More sheep! Nice horns, buddy.

I wandered up to the fiber judging area and felt different kinds of fleeces. I really didn't realize there were so many different breeds of sheep.

a Navajo Churro fleece. Look at those locks! (scratchy though)

Found the Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth. Oooh, the love. The color. The sock yarn! I bought a skein in the lightweight and a skein in the medium weight. I should have gotten 2 in the lightweight. I have ENORMOUS feet. No, truly. Size 11s, darling. I need a minimum of 400 yards of fingering weight for socks, but I was dazzled by the display and only bought 1 skein: 360 yards. Grrrr. Now I either need to get creative with the toes and heel or call them up and see if they have any more of that color and dyelot.

Blue Moon Socks that Rock in Puck's Mischief (lightweight) and Rooster Rock (medium weight)

Interlacements was also there! Fabulous! Really, I love their colors. I probably shouldn't of, but I fell in love with a skein of toasty toes. It was all that scarlet and eggplant and vermillion and deep sapphire blues and emerald greens. So much for self-control, bah. I would have tried tiny toes but did I mention the ginormous feet? There's only 340 (350?) yards in a skein I was a bit annoyed at having to buy 2 skeins and use only 50 yards of the second.

Interlacements Toasty Toes in colorway 213

I stayed away from the Mountain Colors but I probably would have been sucked into some Bearfoot if they'd actually had a booth and not just re-sellers.

I wasn't able to get close enough to the llamas to really take a good look; they were all at the back of the barn. But the alpacas.... Well, let me introduce you to Raspberry Truffles.


Or more correctly, her last year's fleece, transformed into laceweight yarn.

Raspberry Truffles is a "red" huacaya and I got to see a picture of her as a 2-hour-old cria. This laceweight I could not put down. I tried. I put it down, walked all the rest of the festival and still couldn't get it out of my head.

Yes, I like brown. This is an unbelievably rich chocolate brown. And soft, soft like air and goose down and the little fluff hair under my cat's chin.

I bought enough for a shawl (hopefully. 1000 yards should be enough, right?). Now my perfectionist side is Completely Obsessed with finding/creating the PERFECT shawl pattern for this yarn. I think we're leaning toward creating, as I want more of a geometric and less of a lacey effect, while still being Lace. Hard to describe - I guess I'm looking for something with a definitely structure - not so airy. Yet still lace. Hmmm. I've got the Barbara Walkers 1 & 2 cracked and I'll probably not be able to stop myself swatching soon, despite the unfinished state of Lily. (Actually, Lily of the Valley is on the final border! I added 4 more repeats to give it some more length. Wooo, home stretch!)

I'm glad I went (regardless of the schwag), I've always been concentrated on the end product - the yarn and fabric - and it was interesting to plunge my hands into the raw fleece it starts out as. Woulda been more fun with someone along, but on the other hand, I got to wander and gawk at whatever I liked, for as long as I liked. Now of course, I want a pet goat. Look at it this way, I'd never have to mow the stupid lawn again.

Easily amused

I saw this license plate the other day:

HRU2DU

Heh.

(it's an obscure reference to a made-up language in a novel; I like the book a lot but I also have a talent for remembering random facts and details from books, movies, and music I've enjoyed. That ability was extremely useful for did-you-read-it English exams; isn't very useful now, unless I were a reference librarian or something)

Screw Rhinebeck, I'm going to Oregon Flock & Fiber!

I don't spin, but I can still feel the fiber festival love. You all seem like you have such a good time, hanging out with people who actually know what a cast-on is. Around this time of year all I ever seem to read on the blogs is Rhinebeck blah blah blah meetup blah blah Rhinebeck blah fleece blah blah Rhinebeck. Darlins, it's too far to fly to New York for sheepy goodness. I need some West Coast happenings.

I know, there was Estes Park, but that's also an expensive plane ticket away, it was back in June, and, um, none of them knew me from a shawl-stealing axe murderer?

Hey, so I am going to Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival in the grand metropolis of Canby, Oregon, THIS WEEKEND! WOOOO!

In honor of my west coast homies, I present:

The OFFF drinking game
Fun for the whole over-21 family!

Instructions:

Take a drink when you see:

• The Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth!


• Another if you escape with only enough yarn for one pair of socks


• The Llama Barn! LLAMA! LLAMA! (duck)


• Pygora goats. (you must NOT expire from the cuteness)


• Raining? Better get a coffee (-1, too tipsy = slippery)


• Raining hard? Better make it a double. Espresso. (-2, really too tipsy = stuck in the mud/eaten by slugs)


• Fleece to shawl competition! Drink an extra shot for those hard workers.


• A Huacaya alpaca. +1 more if you know/have learnt the difference between them and the Suris.
  


• Yarn that you cannot live without


• Roving that you cannot live without.


• Family members/friends dragging you away from all that you can't live without (-1, more caffeine needed for fiber-lifting strength)


• Myrna Stahman (teaching multiple classes!)


• Carolina Homespun of San Fran-cisco! Rachael recommends their alpaca as being LUSH.


• A vendor or exhibitor from Boring, OR. Most honest rural town name ever.


• A Woolee Winder at work (why does that name always sound vagulely naughty to me?)

Winning conditions: Whomever is still staggering around with their yarn/fleece/take-home-sheep after all that deserves another drink! Or, go back to to Blue Moon Fiber Arts and make your buddies buy you some MORE! SOCK! YARN!

Wooo! See you Saturday!

Moon made of honey

I did go see the Yarn Harlot and it was definitely worth going despite having to stand for 3 hour -- she's hysterically funny. Go if you have the chance.

Finally posting the Honeymoon pics! Lots! of! pictures! Click for big.

This is the view from our hotel, the Tu Tu'Tun Lodge (rhymes with "you're darn tootin!") in southern Oregon. That's the Rogue River in the background.


The Oregon Jam Council wants to know -- are you in possession of jam?



Had to get in some knitting by the river (do I really hunch over that much?). Actually, first day there: didn't do much except sit around the hotel and veg. Both of us were just too tired of Doing Stuff. This lodge: very nice, very friendly, good food. But be warned: if you're not white, moneyed, and retired you're not the core demographic at this place. We ate WAY too much food - neither of us are used to more than 1 course dinners and breakfasts, and never dessert.

We did go hiking later on. We did a short 1-mile loop through an old growth forest.


And later headed for the coast. This is the view of the Oregon coast from the top of Cape Sebastian - north.


The hike was 2 miles down to a sheltered cove then 2 miles back up again to the top of the cape.

Yes, there are actually sandy beaches. Here's the cove.


Most of the pacific coast is precipitous cliffs and small sandy beaches. Rugged, check. Dramatic, check. Hospitable to usual beach activities, no.

Islands and ocean. Lots of seabirds roost on these rocks and sections of immediate offshore coastline are wildlife preserves.

Did I mention cold and windy? I grew up in the west, so the Pacific's the only ocean I've known. A friend of mine in college was from New Jersey and we took a beach trip one Saturday. He ran right in the water... and ran right out again, affronted that the water was COLD. We mocked his ignorance mercilessly and he refused to get his feet wet again.

That water just taken an extended vacation around northern Siberia, the Arctic, and Alaska, and is just now moving south again. Playing in the ocean consists of waiting until your feet get numb so you can't feel the cold any more. I visited the east coast for the first time when I was 11? 12? and my brothers and I were completely shocked to find that the water was warm. Lukewarm-bath warm! In Massachusetts!

I'll reiterate the windy part. Too windy that particular day to fly the kites we'd brought.

Um, yeah.

Yay! Friday! Hooray!

Did that distract you? Yeah, me neither. Although that is a happy thought.

Wish I were going to Venice and Brussels with Rachael and Lala, but 1) I haven't ever actually met either of them nor do I know them well through the Internets, and 2) foreign travel isn't in the cards right now. Sitting here looking out at all the green trees and the clouds (it's been raining on and off) I wish I were in Dublin, though.

I don't really have an exciting career, and it usually requires little to no travel, but 2 years ago I got a phone call out of the blue from my boss asking me if I could go to Dublin. Ireland, yes. The next day. I told him I had a doctor's appointment the next day but I could swing it after that, and 2 days later I was on a flight to Ireland.

It's a convoluted and, more essential to why I won't go into details, work-related story why I got sent there, but Dublin sure was fun. Despite there being... problems with the business-related aspects of why I went, the people I worked with there were exceedingly friendly, as was just about everyone. Dublin's a cool town. Plus you get the most fabulous accents (drunker you got, the less comprehensible. Fabulous.) I spent a week and a half there, then another week later on, and despite having to work part of the weekend and putting in late hours the rest of the time, I got some time to myself.

I'm not really a good tourist, because most of the thing I really like to do in unfamiliar places is to feel familiar and not like a tourist. I do that by walking around a lot and looking at stuff. So I got to walk all over Dublin and took random tour bus things and ate very well (oh, the food. Irish food is wonderful). Luckily I was staying in a very posh hotel right off St. Stephen's Green and about 100 steps from the end of Grafton Street, the big wander-through-the-shops area of Dublin. So, easy to get to just about everything.

The weather was similar to Oregon's, except more variable. So it already felt like home. It's a lovely walkable town with lots of interesting things and people and I wish I could move there and drink at the pub on Fridays and be one of the Dubliners. I'm trying to push K into a Real Honeymoon (tm) there but it really is a long flight and honestly? Kinda looks and feels like Portland. Yeah. Or Seattle. But older. (I like the sense of history about everything.) So it's not really an exotic location.

But it's a comfortable place. And to be honest, I don't like touristing for adventure. I like vacations to be laid-back and low-key. I could take him through St. Stephen's Green to see the ducks, past the Oscar Wilde statue, then over to the canal and the swans. Up and down Grafton street and then over to Guinness to play tourist and make fun of the ridiculous Like-Disnleyland-Only-Its-Beer tour they have. Through Trinity college to see all the old buildings (my favorite: the Dean who declared women would be let in "over my dead body." He's buried beneath one of the bigger promenades and women were admitted the year after his death. Bwhahahaha) and the child singers and the woman playing harp on the street corner. Oh, and a fabulous dinner or 3 or 7. And then a long slow evening at the pub.

I think a long slow evening at the pub is just the thing for tonight.

Obsession

Yes, still obsessed with the Silk Garden beanie. I'm not one for project fidelity, if you haven't already guessed that.

How do I put this politely? It's my own hobby and I'll damn well do what I enjoy. The quilters pull this guilt-to-finish thing on themselves all the time. Why should I make myself feel bad about something that's supposed to give me pleasure? I suppose that makes me a process not a product knitter (or quilter).

Anyway. I have not given up on Lily or the K sweater or the in-preparation-for-the-K-Sweater-sweater. I just wanted to see what the Silk Garden would look like knitted up. And it is oh so seductive. I'm a sucker for this yarn already and this colorway - 82 (on closeout at WEBS because it's a discontinued colorway) - is beautiful. Subtle, greyed shades that flow slowly into each other. It reminds me of beachcombing for agates and jasper on the coast, and the look of the stones when they're wet and gleaming on the beach.


I've saved this knitting so that I only do it during the day, in natural light, because otherwise I miss the true colors and gradations that I am fascinated with.

Of course, I suspect that I'd enjoy knitting with any friggin' Silk Garden colorway. Yes, I know about the high amount of vegetable matter. I pick out burrs and twigs and I do not care. I know it's thick/thin and sometimes overspun and sometimes under. Some Silk Garden was so underspun that a good tug pulled it apart. I still don't care.

Pretty flowers

I can't really say I'm a gardener, but I've got a thing for the plants. Now, the place I live was built in the 1920s and has landscaping to prove it. I have no desire to kill the beautiful huge dogwood that overhangs the front of the house. Oh yeah and the soil = heavy clay, so not all that great of conditions (the calendula loves it. go figure). And K likes him some grass (bleh, grass. Not my favorite except to walk on), so I do most "gardening" in pots.

I'm a sucker for a pretty face so I REALLY should go nowhere near plant nurseries from April through September, but flowers! pretty! sigh.

Hey, I actually have some favorites and do some research and don't impulse-buy everything. Mostly.


This is my black-eyed susan vine, Thunbergia alata. I've been wanting to try this one for awhile. They're in a pot twining over the rusty bits in the iron railing, and the flowers are the most beautiful peachy-red shades. That's some sapphire lobelia growing out of another pot.


Lilac-colored lobelia and purple brachycome - aka Swan River Daisy. Leftovers from some other pots, I just threw them into a basket together. Worked ok, but they need some bigger-leaved things in with them so they don't look paltry.


Some of the big peach roses growing out front. Lesson to me for this summer: if you water the roses, they get don't get as diseased. Yeah, I know, duh.

Behind

In more ways than one.

I had a post all composed on Friday. But it was a little... personal and just a bit bitter and I haven't decided whether I'm going to post it yet or not. It's marinating. Does the world need more public bitterness? Or more self-centered whining blog posts? No, probably not.

Sunday I got my crap together and exported the honeymoon (abbreviated) photos and wrote a cute little "My Honeymoon (minus the sex)" post and then the mouse stopped working and blogger's server decided to not accept photos.

Um, so, not much here. Still got the cold. Vampires called again. I must really be on their shit list now ("what do mean you're still coughing?" Actually I'm sure they were very nice; K took the phone call when I was taking my dammit-I'm-sick nap). I almost cried this morning because

1) I really don't want to be at work today, and

2) I stayed late on Friday to try to fix some problems and none of them worked on Monday morning when they were tested.

I can't go home, there's too many pressing things to do, and I need to keep my gainful employment. So I'm just hunkered down, poking at things with my little virtual sticks until they squeal and bite back. I'd make a terrible doctor (what the HELL is wrong with you?)

So here, I will distract you with the Pretty Flowers. Pretty, pretty!

Oops, blogger's pic server is still unhappy. Pretty flowers later!

I started a Silk Garden Beanie this weekend because I can't keep my hands off the silk garden. There's pictures at that link! Go and enjoy. It's a quick knit and I can't believe how easy it is to keep me entertained; just give me some self-striping wool and I'm fascinated.

Feh

So it's that kind of day where everything is falling apart and there are no triumphs, only disasters. Hiding under my desk and crying seems like a good idea and NO I DO NOT WANT TO COPE with any of my coworkers or the bloated pile of fecal matter a.k.a the software tools I need to perform my job. Innocent and guilty alike are getting big FUCK OFF AND DIE thoughts but, please don't take it personally.

In any case. I'm going to see the Yarn Harlot talk tonight at Powell's Cooks & Gardeners (oops, that's "Powell's Books for Home and Garden" now) and hopefully some beforehand comfort knitting will make me less likely to want to kill people. I missed last year because, well, I wasn't yet reading blogs and I'd just started knitting a few months before. I'm looking forward to seeing her as a real person instead of pictures and words. Can't quite fathom it, it feels like meeting a person from a tv show (not the actor, the actual character) in real life.

JUST. HAVE. TO. GET. THROUGH. THE. WORKDAY. GRRRRRRRRR

Beware Alien Queen Tarantulas!

This weekend was great, it consisted of pretty much just lounging about and doing whatever the hell I felt like doing for 3 days. Bliss. Damn, I even did some housework. The kitchen floor was getting nasty so I hauled out Mr. Broom and his illicit lover Mrs. Mop and went to it.

Sunday night we grilled salmon and zucchini and drank a bottle of merlot (or, um, more) and watched Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam, also know as Turkish Star Wars. This was just awesome. I highly recommend that if you choose to view this movie, do so when drunk. You know, not pass-out drunk, but drunk enough that if something doesn't make sense, it's hysterically funny. Because, nothing is funnier than seeing evil Alien queen kiss one of our heroes then TURN INTO A TARANTULA! AHHHHH!

You can read about a billion reviews of this and just how low-budget and rip-off it is. Really, it's just surreal. Or maybe the subtitle translator guy didn't quite have the grasp of English (or Turkish) that we might have hoped for (ours did have subtitles.)

It starts off with lots of cuts of space ships and the death star blowup sequence from Star Wars and guys looking nervous and yelling and this goes on about 10 minutes more than the 1 minute it should have (another reason you should be drunken and not caring too much about what's going on). Then suddenly Our Heroes are down on some desert planet where I guess Earth People have escaped to. Cue the Raiders of the Lost Ark adventure music. They help them hide in their caves from Evil Alien Dudes. Among Outcast Earth People there is Our Love Interest, who seems only to be able to clutch her little brother and smile. Good thing Outcast Earth Technology still includes lipstick and eyeshadow.


My favorite part was "The Workout", where Our Heroes are becoming lean, mean, alien ass-kicking machines by karate-chopping boulders and running around with rocks strapped to their legs. Awesome. Then there was some alien raid and they were captured and a bunch of dudes got turned into zombies as the aliens removed all their blood and then Alien Queen appeared and tarantula-ified and then I fell asleep. A little too much red wine. But really, this movie bleeds right into a dream state, so it doesn't really matter.

Well lookey here, you can download and view clips for yourself. However, I recommend you get the whole drunken full movie experience. (Although you're going to need an online source or a seriously weird video store to find this puppy. We used to live near the incomparable Scarecrow Video in Seattle, which I guarantee would have something like this. Fortunately we now live near another well-stocked, locally-owned video store with bizarre taste, named Movie Madness. (They're pretty awesome - how can you dislike a video store with an entire category of movies labeled "Yahweh is Angry".))

I did finish up the back of the test slip-stitch sweater on Sunday. It seems... long. Also, I'm trying to decide whether I should put in a button band or not, so it'll go over some little kid's head easier. Is a 28" chest width 2-year-old size? 4-year-old? Button band necessary or not? I'm gonna make the neck opening wider than the pattern, I think by an inch. I hate the uncertainty.

Kiri

Started: April 2006
Finished: June 2006
Really finished (blocked and wove in ends): July 2006
Pattern: Kiri, from Polly Outhwaite at All Tangled Up
Yarn: Douceur et Soie by Knit One Crochet Too; color "Chambray".
Yarn source: Knit Purl sale bin
Yarn used: most of 5 balls. Pattern calls for 3 balls but I added 3 extra row repeats
Needles: 3.5 mm/US 4 Crystal Palace bamboo circulars and Inox circulars. This yarn is too slippery for me to use with polished metal needles.

Crystal Palace bamboo are more expensive but pointier than Clover bamboo. Inox are also gratifyingly pointy. However, I switched to bamboo for some hassle-free airplane knitting and never got around to changing back.


Modifications:

I worked this shawl with a different yarn and smaller needle size then recommended (3.5 mm/US 4 vs. 4. 5 mm/US 7). The yarn is more or less identical to the original recommendation: Douceur et Soie is also 70% mohair/30% silk and has almost the exact same yardage per 25 g ball as Kid Silk Haze does (225 yards vs 229 yards.)

My swatch with the 4.5 mm needles seemed extremely holey to me and I didn't like how loose the whole piece looked, so I went down 3 needle sizes (because I only had an Inox in 3.5 mm). I did a preliminary blocking after 10 repeat rows and found each "leaf" motif was about 1/2" smaller than the pattern gauge. To compensate, I worked 3 more repeats of the pattern, which took an additional 2 balls (heck, I had 5 balls, I might as well use them all up).

Comments:

This was my very first large lace project and my first working with a laceweight yarn. Previously I'd done Knitty's Branching Out scarf in sport-weight Silky Wool.

The shawl ended up enormous, as you can see. The extra 3 repeats -- not necessary. I attribute this to my gauge loosening up as I knit this over several months. I also blocked it fairly severely. For information's sake: I'm 5' 8. The length is over 6 feet -- more like 7 feet.

Thanks to Polly for the fabulous pattern! I didn't have any troubles following it and I appreciated the warning on how much yarn the edging sucks up - almost the entire last ball in my case. The beginning was a little confusing, as I didn't know what was going to happen, but I followed the instructions and the outcome became apparent quickly. I think I added 2 extra garter stitch rows at the very beginning because I couldn't quite figure out which row end bumps to pick up and thought I was one short. The top neck looks fine, so I'm not bothered.


The pattern is very repetitive, so once I'd gone a few repeat rows I'd memorized the pattern and didn't need the chart. It's easy to see if you've made a mistake on a previous row if you're paying attention and not just blindly counting.

As others have said, mohair/silk yarn is not all that fun to tink. I didn't really find it as horrible as reported, though. On the plus side, if you drop a stitch, it doesn't travel far. On the minus side, tinking must be done slowly and over a table. Also on the minus side: it's hard to fix any problem on previous rows without just ripping back to the problem row, because the mohair obscured the stitches and made them hard to pull out. This project was very good practice at learning to drop down just a few stitches to fix a mistake, since once you get deep down into the project and an entire row takes 10 minutes to knit, I REALLY didn't care to rip it back to the row.

I found that the best way to catch errors before they became too painful was to PAY ATTENTION to the current row of knitting, as well as counting. The pattern was quite apparent and if there was something missing or askew, it was usually clear. Not mind-searing attentiveness, just a "there should have been a hole on the row beneath this, shouldn't there?" attention instead of blithely knitting along.

Dumb errors: several times, when I'd stopped in the middle of a row, the next time I picked it up, I knitted the rest of a row when I should have been purling, or vise versa. Essentially I did a short row. I didn't figure this out until I got back to the middle again and thought, "something's gone wrong." How could I do that? Let alone several times? It's taught me to always make sure the yarn is coming from the RIGHT needle before starting up again in the middle of the row. Yes, this is a really dumb mistake.

The blue: what was I thinking? Although I'm pleased with the result, this shawl doesn't really suit me. Maybe it's because I'm not exactly a lace-wearing kind of person. And the blue isn't a flattering color on me. I picked up the yarn in the 40% sale bin from a local yarn store, Knit Purl because I was lusting after it *: it was so soft and feminine and I loved the color in the box (* not really thinking straight when I am in a yarn passion). I actually bought it before I thought about knitting the Kiri shawl. Yes, I'm a terrible stasher.

I got a bee in my bonnet to knit Kiri round about March, and dug out the 5 balls. At that point all I wanted to do was knit Kiri so I didn't look for anything else. And really, would any other color have made it more suitable for me? Hmm.


I find I do not mind at all starting with a few stitches and growing to several hundred. I think this is because when I start a project, I wish to see Immediate Progress or I start getting disheartened or lose interest. Kiri just flew by at the beginning and made me feel like a Lace Superstar. By that time I'd memorized the pattern and it was habit to just pick up the project and knit a few rows every day. I even got so I could do it on the train after thinking I'd never be able to knit lace in those conditions. I think mostly I'm not so motivated by seeing the end of a project nearing. I also very much appreciate the practice of the first few pattern rows so I could learn and memorize the pattern and make my mistakes while there was only a few tens of stitches on the needles and not hundreds.

The shawl's definitely got that ethereal kind of effect, although it's knitted a bit tighter than other Kiris or Birches, so I think that it probably doesn't flow and flutter as much. Very feminine (though very hairy). I'd recommend it as a good beginner's knit (though in something thicker and less annoying than mohair/silk laceweight.)