Wow, where does the time go. I suppose during my long hiatus from the blogging sphere I have lost readers I previously might have had. Well, I guess that's ok and I'll just have to deal with it but hay, I blog mainly for myself anyway as a way to journal my crafting activities. I have been crafting, just not blogging. Sometimes the necessities in life take up a little more time than one expects and takes away from the things one really loves to do, as is in my case. At any rate, here is what I'm doing now, I won't go into all the things that have been keeping me from blogging like, finding facebook (spend way too much time there), my handspun yarn business, homeschooling, wait, I said I wouldn't go there, so where was I.... oh yeah what I'm doing now.

Over on the Ravelry site I joined a Lord of the Rings Mystery Shawl KAL (Knit-A-Long) and I am having a lot of fun with that. Here is what I have done so far without giving to much away, I don't want to spoil the mystery for those who might not be as far along.

Clue number one came out on February 12th, By the way it is not to late to sign up for this project and you can find all the details you need here

This particular shawl is only one in a Lord of the Rings series so if your a LOTR fan like me you might want to check this out.

This project is called the Evenstar, the pendant worn by Arwen Evenstar in the movie played by Liv Tyler.

I have spun up a light lace weight yarn from a 50/50 blend of Mulberry silk/Merino for this project, the silk gives off a beautiful shine that I think will be perfect for this shawl.

I have also knit up the swatch but I didn't use the good yarn for the swatch, I used crochet thread instead.
I had a couple of reasons for doing this. This swatch was my 4th attempt to get it right so I didn't want to mess up the good yarn. Also the crochet thread is the same WPI as my handspun so it would work for obtaining the gauge. I will be using size 4 needles instead of the size 3 prescribed. I also wanted to play around with bead placement to see if I even wanted beads. My real camera is not working so I had to use my camera phone and it doesn't get close enough for you see the beads in this picture but they are there, trust me.

The flower on the bottom has 4 beads, one in the center of each flower section, (don't like this at all). The two flowers on the upper right and left each have one single bead right in the center where a hole is but I placed these beads on different stitches to see what the difference would be and here is what I found.

The one on the left- I placed the bead in the 4th increase stitch on the pearl side prior to purling the stitch, now the bead wound up on the purl side so I had to push it through the hole in order for it to be on the front but the bead is directly in the center of the hole.

The one on the right-I placed the bead on the 5th increase stitch on the purl side prior the purling the stitch and the bead wound up on the front side not the purl side, however it is not perfectly centered and has a rightward slant which I don't like.

I have not yet decided if I like any beads at all at this point but I hope that if anyone else out there is doing this KAL that wanted to place beads that this post is somewhat helpful to you.

Cheers