Caught up in the excitement and camaraderie of a knit-along with, among others, some of my oldest (in blog years) friends, I was easily tempted into signing up for the TTL Mystery Shawl 2014. The prospect of dyeing my own gradient yarn for the project made it even better -- it's been a long time since I spent time in the dye kitchen. The pattern would be released in five clues, one each Sunday in June, and I was amped up to blog about it (I even created a special category) and looked forward to photographing it a couple of times for #100happydays.

I wound and dyed the yarn on the last day of May and managed to cast on and knit a few rows on Sunday, June 1st -- right on time.

A few days later, on Wednesday, I helped my stepdad take my mom to the ER. She was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia... partly the result of complications from side effects of a new chemo. By Saturday afternoon, after two episodes of arterial fibrillation, Mom was transferred to ICU where she remained until she died 16 days later.

The last time I actually spoke with my mother was Friday, the day before going to ICU. I'd brought my knitting to work on while we visited, and she asked about it. I told her about how a mystery pattern works, and how fun it was to dye yarn again. I had no idea that it would be our last real conversation, and that it would be about my knitting and this shawl. It's not surprising, though, she was always interested in what I was doing, and I can't tell you how many times over the years she'd say, half-exasperated/half-prideful, "You're always busy doing something!"

I was happy for the distraction that the knitting provided while Mom's condition fluctuated, eventually declining, over those 19 days. I was grateful, even, to tink back and re-knit many rows (14, I think) of Clue 2, stitch by stitch, to right an error. My knitting was something that I could fix.

Probably the most complicated lace pattern I've ever knit, arguably moreso because I'm one of those rare super freaks that works from written directions alone, it gave me something to concentrate on and think about that wasn't my mother, though of course I thought about my mother constantly.

I looked forward to knitting every night -- after work, after visiting the hospital, no matter how late it was... I had to take time. I enjoyed following along, contributing, reading about others' progress with the pattern, how they felt about their colors, how they were working out the transitions*, concerns over yardage and whether one had enough stitch markers in their possession, what types of needles people were using. I spent time carefully highlighting my pattern clues, color coding the different sections so that it would be easier to keep my place; I employed sticky notes to further zero in; breaking it down, keeping control.

A margarita-induced setback late in the game resulted in the tinking of a few more rows, and the discovery that while I can drink and knit at the same time, a good hoppy craft beer yields the best result!

By the end of the month, I was on track and nearing the finish. Therapy knitting at its finest, I was really pretty astounded at my progress and, without being too sappy about it, gave a thankful nod to Mom & Sharon, my guardian knitting angels. I was in first grade when my mother taught me to knit for the first time. Though her prowess in knitting never matched that of her sewing, she was knowledgeable and appreciative. My sister Sharon was neither steady nor prolific as a knitter over the years, but she chose the most amazing projects and the quality of her work was incredible.

• Project:  TTL Mystery Shawl '14  by Kirsten Kapur from Through The Loops
• Yarn:  Make.Do Be Fingering/Sock superwash, hand-dyed gradient
• Needle:  US 6
• Start to Finish:  June 1 - July 5, 2014

Thanks to my model, my youngest sister Ann. She models all (2) of my TTL Mystery Shawls! The first was finished just before they left for Brazil, this one as they returned.

*1-4-2-3-2-2 as suggested by Terry, and probably because it gave me one more slightly complicated aspect to control.

Upon returning home from vacation, I immediately went over for some grandson snuggles!

He wore some snazzy woolly footwear from Aunt Kate for his 20-week photo yesterday. Happy little pudgeroo!

I was right back to work on Wednesday for the rest of the week, so Saturday morning sans alarm clock was quite welcome.  I ended up spending the entire day in my PJs -- an unintentional but completely welcome Pajama Day! I can't remember the last time I had one of those, and I got so much done.

I even measured, wound, and dyed some yarn for Kirsten's TTL Mystery Shawl 14! I was vaguely aware that this was coming up but had little intention of knitting it... until I caved last Thursday and bought the pattern. I'm loving the camaraderie of knitting this project along with so many long-time blog friends -- it feels like a good, old-fashioned knit-along!

The project doesn't require a gradient yarn, but I didn't have 500 yards of anything else (recommended solid or semi-solid) that would work, so thought I'd try dyeing a gradient myself. I'm very pleased with the result, though it was apparent from the first dip that the numbers I'd worked out were purely mathematical exercise. I punted and all is well, with an extra hank of a medium-dark to spare, but I would never be able to repeat this exactly!

Something to work on, perhaps? For a lot of reasons, I haven't dyed in a while; I'd recently packed up and moved all my dye stuff back home so I was digging into lots of boxes to come up with everything I needed. It felt good to be back at it, and the response has been good, so who knows... maybe there's more to come.

Hope you had a great weekend!