Anytime of the Year Pi.

 

I have made a number of shawls that I have started on Pi Day. Either March 14 or 22 July. The aim with these projects is to start on a Pi date and finish on the next Pi date. This has not always occurred and the latest Pi variant is a good example. I started it in July 2022 which would give me more than seven months to complete; if I hadn’t run out of steam. There were two main problems:-1, I didn’t like the yarn; 2, the border chart was completely wrong.

I had got the yarn in a swap and it is totally not my colours. I should have just put it in the thrift pile but it was Noro and it wasn’t that bad. It could have stayed in my stash but I was determined to use it. I the end I just didn’t have the enthusiasm to finish the shawl until I decided I would give it to my Mum and then I was eager to work the border. Except the chart for the border was completely wrong. This was a free pattern and the designer was deceased, so no asking for help. It wasn’t a case of one row being incorrect - none of the rows matched up with the previous row. Rather deflated I eventually went through my pattern books until I chose something that was similar to the original intent. Imagine my stress when I found a mistake in that pattern too. At least that was an easy fix.

Although I had decided to give this away, I wasn’t going to rush to finish it ahead of other projects. In fact I wasn’t even going to touch it during the WIP Along. Except I calculated how many rows per day I would have to work to finish it by the end of the year and suddenly finishing was doable. In the end I completed all the knitting before the end of November and blocked it and sewed in the ends by the end of that month. It felt great to have it finished and not have to think about it anymore and I gave it to my Mum so I didn’t have to think about that either.

 

We are coming up to Pi Day. Will I, should I start a shawl? Part of me says yes because it is fun knitting to arbitrary deadlines. But a bigger part of me says no because I don’t want another shawl plus I don’t really have suitable yarn to use. But you never know what the future holds.