Prairie Rose: Take Two ~a post by guest blogger Morgen

Well this has been a bumpy road!  After all of my troubles getting started on Prairie, I got about 6 inches into the shawl when I decided to ditch my efforts.  I was only halfway through Chart B and the edge of my shawl was already looking ratty. I want to say that it was pilling a bit, but I'm not sure pilling is the best word.  And it wasn't a beautiful yarn "bloom". It just looked as though I was using really really cheaply made yarn.  I was, in fact, using Fleece Artist Sea Wool that I have had in my stash.  I loved the color ( a rich raspberry, both dull and shiny at the same time) but I was heartsick to see that only 6" in and it was already looking worn.  Really worn.  In that 6"  I had already taken sharp scissors to the bloom 3 times. I felt weird about it, it is Fleece Artist after all.  It wasn't cheap and I've never had complaints about their products in the past, but I really loved this pattern and I just could not bring myself to invest that much time in my life into something that would be a huge disappointment upon completion.

So Prairie Rose went to the frog pond.  I think it was about this point Tuesday evening that my husband and son took an alarmed look at one another and quietly got out of Dodge as quickly as they could.  I stewed for hours.  I tore apart the stash and found several good candidates but each was just shy of the yardage needed.  I stewed some more. I knew I wanted the shawl to be "rose" colored.  But I also decided that for me Prairie needed to be rustic in flavor, not fancy.  Suddenly I knew which yarn I HAD to use... Loft by Brooklyn Tweed.  I surfed online and settled on the color Camper.  Fortunately, I decided to beetle over to Churchmouse yesterday to purchase said yarn rather than have it shipped to me.  I forgot that reds/pinks are horrible to photograph accurately. Camper, in person looks not rose-like to me but rather like cream of tomato soup.  My only choices then were to go with a dark red or a barely-there pink.  I opted for the barely-there pink.  It is called Postcard and it looks like granite would look if it had the slightest tinge of pink, a sort of gray stoney pink.  It's growing on me.  It's not the color I had hoped for, but it has its own charms.

I had forgotten how much I love this yarn!

Last night and most of today I have worked on Prairie and am nearly done with Chart A.  I am way behind, but am much happier with  my work.  I also have gone up a needle size to a US5.  One benefit of frogging my first attempt was that I got a better feel for the size when I took it off the needles, and it was smaller than I was expecting.


How fare the rest of you??