Frolicking in the Frog Pond -- Friday Fiber Art

 

Post Virus Poncho 50.55% Finished

I finished the first Post Virus Shawl last spring and instead of wearing it, I set it aside because I decided I'd rather have a poncho.  So I started a second one with the same yarn and colorway.  But I barely got started before I set it aside to work on a time-sensitive project and never picked it up again until this past Monday.  Monday-Friday should have been time enough time for me to get at least a third of the way--even through the pink section and into the pale blue maybe.  But instead I've goofed so many times, I've had to put just about every stitch in more than once, many more than twice and some more than thrice.

It's been a veritable frog frolic.

It's super frustrating when the piece is still so small.  When I can put a whole row back in in under 20 minutes.  But eventually I'll get to the rows where it takes me an hour just to get from the top edge to the peak of the triangle.  Long before then taking out a whole row will be well beyond frustrating.  I know because that happened a bunch while making the first one.

And yet I started the second.  What was I thinking?

I wasn't thinking.  I was drooling over the image of myself wearing the finished poncho.

But this pattern, tho gorgeous, is very unforgiving.  As unforgiving as math on which it is based.  If only I could reliably catch my mistakes before I am on top of them about to put a stitch into a stitch that isn't there!

A year ago this week the first cake of that yarn arrived on my birthday and I promised myself that I would be wearing whatever I made from it in time for my next birthday.  That's a promise I will have broken as there is no way I can finish it in two days.  Not even if I made zero mistakes from this moment on.



Well, my eyes are rebelling so I'm going to leave you with the video tutorial which taught me how to make the Post Viral shawl.  It is the creation of Bag-O-Day Crochet and draws it's name from both the fact that it alternates sections of the virus stitch pattern with sections of post stitches and also because she created it in the months after the pandemic's grip had loosened.