Golden.

According to this picture, I've got some kind of love affair going on with red, pink, and orange. I swear I didn't notice until I organized the photo shoot. Also: damn, do I need a haircut. The John Frieda Secret Weapon Frizz Ease is letting me down. But back to the matter at hand: gold medal for Kiri!

In the end, I did 11 repeats + the edging, which makes sense -- my total yardage of Lion & Lamb was about 65 yards short of the Cracksilk Haze called for in the pattern. Finished dimensions are 62" wide by 33" long, and it's very fetching over jeans and a black sweater. Also looking forward to wearing it with some sort of floaty sundress.

Shawls are such great projects: why didn't I know this? Once you finish the knitting, you're done. No worrying about iffy sewing skills, no pile of dismembered sweater pieces looking reproachful in the knitting basket -- just block, wait, and wear. I want to do another one immediately. I'm going to cruise through Wendy's FOs and find one that I think I can tackle.

Meanwhile...RIP, Yarn Diet.

Uh, whoops. I'm going to blame my lovely and crafty friend, SM, who led me into temptation this morning at The Beadery. This ain't your junior high-school bead shop, baby. If you have the slightest interest in jewellry and live within a day's drive of Toronto, you should get in the car/on the train/bus and come see this place. It's full of strokers, just like a yarn shop. I stroked ebony beads and turquoise beads and blown glass beads and Australian opals. And a whole lot of POLISHED ROCK beads, which is just more proof that my parents should have given me that rock polisher back in 1978 when I really really really wanted one more than I had ever wanted anything before. Because I could be making it big now, polishing rocks and drilling holes in them and creating works of art. Instead of which I'm drowning in yarn.

Right, so enough blaming Mum and Dad and back to blaming SM. After we parted on Queen, I walked down past Romni and sweet mother of pearl they were having a sale. What you see in the photo is two skeins of my true love Malabrigo (colourway: blue surf) for a project to be named later, and thirteen balls of my esteemed friend Lamb's Pride Bulky (colourway: blue magic) for Teva Durham's cabled riding jacket, because now that I've knit Kiri I have an inflated sense of my abilities and will spend several months dashing myself on the rocks of Cable.

Yes, the Olympics are ending, and I've got the blues. But such pretty ones.