Now that the festive knitting is done, bar the blocking, I’m not in the mood to think about starting anything new quite yet. And it’s not as if I don’t have several unfinished projects languishing in my knitting bag. So I chose the one I feel most guilty about. *blushes*

Like everyone else who took part, I started the Anniversary Mystery Shawl knitalong back in June. The clues were released weekly, and for the first couple of weeks, I kept on track and was feeling all pleased with myself. Even when I frogged it and restarted with entirely different patterns, I didn’t get far behind. Then birthday present knitting took over in July and August and after knitting two huge shawls, I wanted a break from dainty lace. Then of course there was festive knitting and this poor shawl just got completely neglected. So much so that the pattern is not even very mysterious any more, and has been released to be bought by anyone who fancies it.

When I rescued it from obscurity on the weekend, I was just a few rounds from the end of Clue 3, which I easily finished off that day. But now Clue 4 is to be tackled. On the suggestion of a wiser knitter, I have put in stitch markers to separate each 48 stitch pattern repeat to make sure that I don’t mess up, something which I never usually do but probably should (put in stitch markers, I mean – I do mess up quite frequently!). With over five hundred stitches on the needle, it doesn’t make for great photography, sadly.

It’s not exactly mindless knitting for picking up at odd moments over the Christmas break, and I suspect that there’ll be another new project to tempt me very soon. But for now, I am dedicated to mysterious knitting and can feel smug that the project has had the “zzz” removed on my Ravelry project page.