Opus

o·pus

/ˈōpəs/

noun

1. 1.

   MUSIC

   a separate composition or set of compositions by a particular composer, usually ordered by date of publication.

   "The Gambler was Prokofiev's sixth opera, despite its early opus number"
2. 2.

   any artistic work, especially one on a large scale.

   "he was writing an opus on Mexico"

So, finally.

 I got this shawl pattern called Lily of The Valley about a year ago from Ravelry - it's a Russian pattern which means it's wildly complicated. The first time I printed it out I freaked a little because I couldn't read it, then realized I had accidentally printed the Russian pattern, not the translation. Oops. It's all charts - about ten of them, hundreds of rows, the chart key for the different stitches  alone is 2 pages long with links to videos to show the harder stitches. It has videos, did you catch that? Videos.  The charts printed on regular size paper was really hard to  read, I rarely work by chart alone so that made it all the more difficult. Here's something you may not know - if you need something to be bigger you can bring it down to an office supply and have them enlarge it for you, it's not even that expensive. When I was in PA there was a shop near the office so I trotted down there to have them do that. 

The guy that did it found it challenging because the charts had to be enlarged evenly on 11 x 17 paper, he enjoyed the challenge and I enjoyed the results. And I had a couple more copies  made up for my knitting group. Step one. Then the yarn. I had bought undyed alpaca lace weight yarn and ordered the dye - it took me a few days to dye it, dry it and wind it. But it was perfect. I started knitting it and quickly discovered - the yarn was too thin. The entire pattern got lost and you couldn't even see it. So I took the yarn and made something else with it. I continued to look off and on, too thin, too thick, not enough. By that time we had decided to sell the house and I packed it away - off we went. Of course since it was packed last I didn't remember where it had been packed.I finally found it about two weeks ago and was back on looking for yarn

 

I had bought some but when I started knitting realized I was about 400 yards short, arrgh!! So I rummaged in my stash and found the perfect shade and plenty of yardage. So FINALLY, after a year I have started and I do think of it as my opus. It's the hardest lace shawl I've ever attempted but like anything else in life you can't keep doing the same thing over and over if you want to improve. I'm already halfway through the first chart, whether I'm doing a good job of it is up for debate, but I love a challenge.