Rose Apparent

[Catching up after yet more rain and fallen trees roundabout Exit 151 left me without Internet access for a while.]

Blogless Iris in Iowa started a Rose of England knit-along! I signed up, even though my Rose is already in progress. Indeed, she's sufficiently advanced to have succumbed to a condition shared by many large lace projects: the formless blob stage.



At round 70 Mistress Rose has 17,097 stitches and is about 18 inches (46 cm) in diameter. Given C=2πr, even two 24-inch (61-cm) circular needles aren't quite enough to show her off properly. A pity – her center medallion is almost finished. The heraldic rose is finally apparent, with its open center and heart-shaped petals.



At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, it's the season for rose hips rather than flowers, but I did find this late bloomer for comparison. I don't think I ever noticed before that the center of an old-fashioned rose really does look like a stained glass rose window or that its petals are heart-shaped and subtly shaded. Rose of England is remarkably true to life.

Knitting Rose has been pretty straightforward so far. The only thing that has me fretting is the dreadful possibility of Not Enough Yarn. I have four 600-yard (548 m) balls of Zephyr, so

(waves hands over math, mumbles about A=πr²)

the diameter of the shawl when the first ball runs out is about half the maximum possible diameter of the finished shawl. At that critical juncture, there will either be happyhappyhappy dancing or much wailing and (gasp) possibly a re-start or the shawl will be re-christened a shawlette. We'll see.