Guess what. Jean Miles has started a new, once-in-a-lifetime lace shawl, the Unst Bridal Shawl. Can you believe it?
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m currently following along in 2006 as Jean knits the Princess Shawl, and the whole idea of this kind of immense project has taken a mighty hold on my brain. It seems over-the-top in that scary but oh-so-tempting way that something like skydiving might. You’d have to be utterly committed before the jump. Starting and not finishing would be such a terrible let down. At the same time, part of the attraction lies in having to let go of the outcome.
At one point during the knitting of the Princess Shawl, Jean says this:
If I knew for sure what the word “Zen-like” means, I might say that this is a Zenlike experience. There is no realistic prospect of finishing in any sort of imaginable future — of finishing the edging, even, let alone the shawl. The whole pleasure resides in the process, like life itself.
Mmmmm . . .
With the fun of the finishing and wearing or finishing and gifting so remote, would you knit in a different way, with a different mindset? How about the fact that I have no imaginable use for such a thing? Does that make the whole prospect more or less outrageous? Owen Meany, anyone?
While trying to figure all of this out, I’ve signed up for Eunny Jang’s lace class on Craftsy. I’ve also been doing some reading trying to get my mind around exactly what such a large, lace shawl would entail in terms of knowledge and skills. Surely, I’d need to work up to it with some smaller projects, but which ones?
In the meantime, I’m two squares into the Lizard Ridge, and I hope to wrap up the Lin-Lin Shawl before the end of next week. That’s a picture of the Lizard Ridge squares above. The Lin-Lin will be hard to photograph until it’s off the needles, but I’ll keep you posted. There will be car travel this weekend, and you know what that means!