More about the shawl. First, a plug for the shop: The Classy Needle in Fernandina Beach, Florida. It's really a needlepoint shop, and a very nice one indeed, I was tempted by some of the lovely canvasses and leather bags and other accessories with very elegant and un-boring needlepoint inserts. I could have gone nuts spending money on some of those accessories, and she has a huge assortment of needlepoint yarns. The owner is also a knitter and carries a small but colorful assortment of yarn, mostly cottons and other Florida friendly fibers, and mostly in pastels and "knitting for the grandkids" colors, because, I suspect, her clientele is mostly the affluent retiree boaters and vacationers in that area. (Grandma needs something to do while Grandpa is running around town in his little yachting cap looking like a dork.) We chatted a bit when I was in there at lunch yesterday, and she mentioned that she is stocking lots more novelty yarns for the scarf craze - we both sort of shook our heads at the novelty-yarn-scarf-craze in Florida, but it's selling like crazy there so she is stocking what the customers want. But I digress again...at first I thought there was nothing I wanted, but then I saw a shawl on display - really just a basic garter stitch triangle, but done in lovely, shimmery hand-painted rayon, loosely knit, it looked amazing. And the yarns were on display below it. And you know the rest of the story.

The yarn is Fiesta Yarns Gelato and Rayon Boucle, in the Caribbean colorway:


and the flash didn't distort the colors too much - I love, love, love these colors. I've never seen this Gelato yarn "in the flesh" before, and now I'm in love. The Gelato is soft and light as air - the Rayon Boucle is a little rougher, but still soft and light. All the colorways she stocked were gorgeous, but these are my favorite summer colors, and will work as well with black and white and denim (the three things I wear most). The free pattern is very simple, it's two rows of Gelato, two of Rayon Boucle, cast on a ton of stitches on a large needle and start decreasing at each end and in the middle. I'm considering a modification, though - her pattern calls for casting off two stitches at once in the middle, by slipping two, knitting one, and passing both slipped stitches over - I'm thinking I'm going to use some scrap yarn and cast on a mini-version of this first, to test the look of that decrease. I'm thinking a decrease on either side of the center point may look better to me. But I'll test it both ways before I decide.

I think Bess has touched on this before, but when you're on a weight-loss roll, it's very difficult to be thrust into an environment where you're more or less forced to eat things you normally would avoid (fried fish, french fries, hush puppies, et al.) I got on the scale this morning with much trepidation, afraid that the past couple of days of intensive grease consumption had put a couple of my hard-lost pounds back on. The Boss and I both try to eat South Beach style, but after the first night in town we pretty much surrendered to the local cuisine, telling ourselves "it's only for two days." Famous last words, right? So I was peeking through my fingers at the scale this morning, but happily, the numbers remain unchanged - I didn't lose any weight this week, but I didn't gain either, and under the circumstances (PMS, too much sitting, and the fried food festival) I consider this a victory. Normal weight loss reporting should resume next weekend. Now it's time to go work out.