Stupid OCD...

It's done!

Wellll...it was done. Observe that little differently colored edge portion? That's where I started the border thinking I had enough purple/green/black varigated to finish it. This picture was taking at 12:45 am....

This is after I ran out of black about halfway around at 11:30PM, swore, ransacked the stash and MIRACULOUSLY found 2 more skeins of black sparkly stuff. I was so excited to be finishing this stinkin' shawl. But as I looked at it laying on the floor that different colored edging reallllly started to bother me.

So I yanked it out. Thankfully it's crochet, so I managed to go right to the middle of the round, snip the purple part, rip out those 40 something edge stitches, tie down where the double black started, pick up another strand of black, and start again on the edge.

After working until 2 am, I decided to call it quits. I have 14 mesh stitches left to put an edging on. The edging pattern involves 11 stitch maneuvers for one mesh stitch. I have a ways to go. I figure about an hours worth of work. I might finish today. I also might leave it until this weekend because of the homework pile that seems to be growing out of control.

But look how pretty the middle is, and it's all done!

I was going for a more poetic version of the whole "stella" thing. Stella meaning star, I wanted to put an actual star in the center, have it fade out into space, then out into blackness. I don't know that I love the physical as much as the conceptual, but hey, its sparkly. It's hard to hate sparkles. :)

As a bit of an aside....

you'll notice there's now a poll on the blog. It's to let you guys help me choose the "big project" for April. Being a grad student, April is kinda a jam-packed month homework-wise. So I'm going to pick some projects that I can just work on a little bit at a time, show some progress, but not feel obligated to devote the month to finishing. Here's some further details on what's up with the choices

-Socks a palooza: basically involves finishing a lot of socks that are just laying around or planned for creating. This won't get rid of the whole pair-a-month deal, but it will wrap up some of the pairs laying around the house.

-Scarf fest: while perusing the project list I noticed I have about 8 scarves that are half finished on there. This would involve reducing that number

-the BEAST: Lets be realisitic, its not going to get finished in a month. This would involve finishing 8 stripes on it minimum, thats around 2 stripes a week, which is pretty reasonable, but will still be challenging.

-Sunset Ruana: I have one of these babies started, I have the yarn for it, it's in the basket. I probably won't finish it in a month either, but progress might not be bad.

-Hats Galore: Bascially this would be a Beret-fest. I have about 3 sweet honey berets on the list for various gifts. Boring? Maybe, but hey, I could probably squeak in some tutorials etc throughout the month.

-A good mix: you don't want to commit to just one of the above plans, and want to see a little bit from more than one of them. Leave specific thoughts in the comments! I'm open to suggestions if you have some other ideas!