It only took two weeks to come to this, but I’ve finally decided to stop getting all worked up about the yarn for the Mystic Light Shawl KAL.

Here’s what happened:

I searched the internet far and wide to find a yarn that was the color of flame since the hint that Knitandknag gave was that the theme was fire.  Ooh how exciting! However, not knowing the construction of the shawl, I didn’t know whether a handpainted yarn would work or not.

So, finally, I picked out this beautiful, brilliant merino/tencel fingering weight from Ellen’s 1/2 Pint in the Blazing Sunshine Colorway and swatched it up a couple of weeks ago.  This yarn is super soft and shiny, so I was psyched about using it for a shawl.

Now, I knew it was a little stripey, but until I knew how the shawl was constructed or how wide it would be, I wasn’t sure whether it would be a problem to see the lace.  So when the first clue came out this past Thursday, I started knitting it and got to this point:

From the first clue, I could tell it was a triangle knit from the neck down. That’s when I knew it wasn’t going to work.  It was stripey and pooling. 

So, I began my search all over again! 

I looked at getting 3 shades of red MainLine yarn from Halcyon so that it would be more solid and I could graduate the colors.  Then I thought that wouldn’t work becuase I wouldn’t know when to change colors since each clue comes out once a week. I then considered blending yellow and red fiber (using my new drum carder) in varying degrees of color to go from yellow, orange, deep orange to red and spin that up.  I even considered spinning up this SpunkyEclectic silk in Sangria colorway which I had already started and to use that for the shawl.

Then common sense got the better of me and I realized that there was no way that I was going to have time to spin up a yarn (would have to be a 3 ply) for this shawl. (it took a week to come to my senses about this!)

That’s when I decided to just knit it in a red yarn which I had lying around in my stash. That was fine, I started swatching until (SPOILER ALERT) I received my Year of Lace project pattern and yarn yesterday in the mail.  Well it just happens to be RED! (no pix included so that anyone else on that KAL hasn’t received theirs yet)  Whatever would I do with two red shawls?

So that’s it! I am now going to knit with some Alchemy Bamboo which I’ve had in my stash since 2006 Stitches East.

It’s more like a burnt orange with very gradual color changes.  It will be lovely in the fall, which is probably about when I’ll finish it at the rate I’m going!!!