During a thoroughly pleasurable visit to Smoking Hot Needle's blog the other day I was hit hard by the shawl bug and I have cast on a new shawl project. She made a gorgeous shawl with Noro yarn! Cherry Blossom (?) is what she named the shawl. I was entranced by the stitch pattern! I've never seen anything like it! She's so generous with her  projects too! The pattern she used/made was available to share (yes, she cited the stitch source).
Well, you know how it goes ... new pattern ... time to browse the stash for just the right yarn! I didn't want a solid color because this stitch pattern just begs for variation to show it off ... but not too many colors, for my taste. I toyed with several possibilities ... then I looked into my super wash wicker trunk. Tucked away was a bag of off-white Emu. It has lint flecks of black, grey and brown. But - I had always thought it was pretty boring. About a year ago I was doing some dyeing and had some orange Koolade left so I used a big pot but only put about 3 inches of water/dye into it. Then I stuffed all 10 balls in so only the bottoms got dyed. The result was skeins that were now 2/3 off-white and 1/3 colored. I call them my Orange Creamsicle yarn.
The moment I laid eyes on it I knew it would be perfect for this shawl!!
I soon discovered that trying to start a new project at 10 o'clock at night is not a stroke of brilliance.....
On my first attempt I finished the 2nd row of pillars before discovering I had mis-read the pattern which is why my knitting didn't look like the stitch pattern I fell in love with! Frogged it all!!
3 more attempts followed with problems with the increases or miscounted stitches, each resulted in a complete rip and reknit!
5th time around I decided I would do the increases on the garter stitch rows instead of the pillar rows. Although it worked better for me I was not happy with the shape it produced - however - I didn't rip it all out.  I decided I could live with a beaver tail beginning instead of a more traditional point. But now I am increasing every right side row and I am much happier with the shape and the rate at which it is broadening.
Because I started from the inside of the first ball of yarn the orange color is muted. As I progress through the ball the orange will become darker. When I start the next ball after that the orange will be muted again. This is exactly the kind of variation I wanted. Sort of an artistic color wash without any rhyme or reason.
Now that I have the stitch and pattern sorted out I can just sit back and enjoy knitting. I have 10 - 50 gm balls of yarn. I don't know if I'll use them all but I want this to be a generous size shawl because it is thin yarn knit on 4.5 mm needles. I think I'll put a border on it when it's finished so I'll need to save one ball for that. That's a long way off though ... I've got lots of time to look for a border I like!