A swallowtail for you, a swallowtail for me!

I have been staring at the Swallowtail Shawl for quite a while now, so I decided to make one for my mom for mothers day. I did the worsted weight version as it was the only yarn I could find in the exact red that my mother loves. It was Patons Classic Wool in Bright Red. (top photo is most true to colour)
Of course, about half way through the budding lace repeat I realized I wasn't going to have enough yarn. So I cut it short at around the 9th or 10th repeat, and continued on. I then realized once again I would not have enough yarn, so I skipped a lily of the valley and eventually made it with about 10 yards to spare. phew! So unfortunately, it's a little smaller than what I had expected. It got the "loverly" title from my mom, so I guess it went well enough.

As soon as I finished, I absolutely needed to cast on again, but this time for myself. I went with Estelle's Cadenza in the purple colourway once again, it really is a lovely yarn/colour. AGAIN I noticed halfway through the budding lace repeat that I would run out of yarn. grr. I did 12 repeats of it and then jumped into the next chart, but managed to do everything else exactly as stated from there. Well...until I got to the cast off edge. It was going good, I was digging it, and then all of a sudden I ran out of yarn. I ran out of yarn halfway through the cast off edge. The horror! Well, actually, I kind of saw it coming and planned on just doing a regular cast off (instead of the elastic one) to see if I could stretch the yarn. It worked..for a little while. Then I frantically searched around for a colour even remotely close to it, I finally found a deep purple. But it was mohair, and it also had other colours in it. It would have to do.

Patting myself on the back, I figured I did good. You could barely tell there was another yarn, and it was just half of the cast off edge, no biggie. So then I washed it and went to block it. Yeah, that little section I used a regular cast off...that was stupid. Don't ever do that. So half of it is pointed and half of is it just sort of scalloped.
I also had the most perfect beads ready for the nupps, which I forgot about until the bind off when I was searching for yarn and found them. Again, ah well.
I was really proud of myself, both shawls took more time to block than to knit! Total instant gratification, I knocked them each out in a day.

I see many more of these babies in my future.