Asking for Roses Shawlette

So in early December, C's work had a holiday dinner at The Mansion on Turtle Creek, one of the most exclusive restaurants in Dallas. I had never been there, so was looking forward to checking it out. A few weeks beforehand, I decided that I needed to knit a shawl for it.

On my birthday I drove over to the Woolie Ewe in Plano and took quite a while looking at my yarn options. I wanted something a bit dressy. Maybe a bit of sparkle or shine. Initially I looked at some silk blend pre-beaded yarn, and they had some there, but at $18/74 yds, that was going to get real expensive, real fast for a shawl I wouldn't wear very often.

I also looked at laceweights, knowing that I didn't have much time and I could maybe double it or double-strand it along with a thicker weight. I still didn't know what shawl I wanted to make, exactly. Just wanted to see what yarn was out there. The WE has a very wide selection of yarn and there were lots of shiny options, but many of them were a bit....discoballish. Just a little flashier than I wanted.
Then I found the Sublime Yarns Lustrous Extra Fine Merino. It has a subtle shimmer to it that doesn't show up in photographs, but isn't sparkly. It is super soft and had some nice colors. It was DK weight, which meant I had a chance of finishing the shawl in time. I chose a taupe color that would look good with black or cream or maybe some shades of brown. I purchased four balls and came home to look for a pattern. I did a Ravelry search and came up with the perfect pattern: Asking for Roses Shawlette. A decorative edge, but yet plenty of stockinette so that I could finish it quickly. A good medium size. Called for the amount of DK yarn I had.

So I knit this thing up in good time and finished it in about 10 days. Plenty of time to block it and wear it to the party. My parents were scheduled to come over and babysit.

Then I got a bad cold right before the party, with sore throat and the whole thing. The sore throat went away and I figured I could get by at dinner with some strong cold medicine. We were going to take N to a local babysitting place because we didn't want to expose my parents to the cold I had. Then N got sniffly and tired the day of the dinner. So I stayed home with her while C made his appearance at dinner. Turns out that N was sniffly and tired for a whopping day. The kid has an iron-plate immune sytem. It took me almost three weeks to kick it and if she ever even got it, she had it for a day.So anyway, I still have a pretty shawlette to show for it. No big fancy corporate dinner for the Wif this year. I can live without the nice dinners and trips we used to take pre-N, but that doesn't mean I don't occasionally miss them. I'll choose staying home with my sick daughter any day of the week, though, over my old life.