Time For a New Shawl

The doll I've been designing lately has been giving me problems for the past few days (friggin little pointy eared bastard), so I decided it was time for a change of pace. Last night my Knit Picks order arrived full of all kinds of scrumptious yarn such as my Springtime Shadow Tonal lace yarn. I instantly popped it on the new swift (so in love with the new swift!), wound it into a cake, and went off to knitting group.

I spent most of group working and reworking the pointy eared bastard's arms, gave up, and started work on the Dragonfly Shawl. All I had time for was the gauge swatch (which I recently learned is VERY IMPORTANT), and it measured up perfectly! Since I was so stressed last night, it didn't really come out to my liking so I decided to start over today at lunch. With my pattern book sitting out on the table, a coworker came up to check it out then asked a million questions about it - the most interesting one being "how long does it take you to make something like this?" I honestly didn't have a clue. It's been forever since I timed anything I've crafted, so I decided to pay attention this time around. In the following half hour I was able to eat my sandwich and complete 6 shells, so 5 minutes per shell.

When I got back to my desk I decided to quickly do the math. 153 shells per triangle, 2 triangles = 306 shells. 182 shells at 5 minutes each equals 25.5 hours!!! That doesn't even count the panel of dragonflies in the middle. I'm hoping that once I get into a rhythm with the pattern that it isn't going to take me 5 minutes per shell, but I felt like I was moving pretty quickly. So... here's the goal: I'm going to keep track of time worked on this shawl and see if I can do it under 25 hours. Ready? Set.... Go!!!

Day 1, Triangle 1: 28 shells = 2 hours 20 minutes
Average: 5 minutes per shell
Total: 2 hours 20 minutes