Feeling independent

I decided to name this shawl Independence. I've been hearing the chorus from "Fifth of July" by Eddie from Ohio every time I look at it now.

It's the fifth of July, feeling independent
Please step aside, the celebration's over
I'm now on my own for the first of my life on the fifth of July
Now what?

It's a fun song. This is a fun piece of yarnery.

The pattern is Color Affection by Veera Valimaki (available on Ravelry here). The yarn is Baah! La Jolla in grey onyx, pink flamingo, and maldives. I enjoyed working with this yarn, and I'd use it for another project in a heartbeat. The twist gives it a lot of texture (literally and visually) and there are lots of colors to choose from at my local yarn store. I just love that bright pink. It's LOUD. Thankfully the grey and blue do a good job of toning it down to baby flamingo levels.

I finally settled on the name since I cast off the last stitch just before July 4th, and the colors are kind of a slant rhyme to Old Glory's red, white, and blue.

It took me this long to block the darn thing, don't know why. I'm happy with how it turned out. The garter stitch fabric ended up pleasantly squishy and drape-y. As I suspected, even though I carried my yarn loosely and used the "incredibly stretchy bind off" for the bottom, my edges are a little bit tighter than ideal, which prevents me from really stretching it to wrap it around my (somewhat broad) shoulders with enough to bring it back around my neck securely, but it drapes beautifully as a shawl over just my shoulders or around my neck as a scarf.

I've worn it a couple times already and have gotten lots of compliments. Most recently it went on an adventure to the beach in Half Moon Bay. The beach was pretty cool and foggy, but there were pelicans so it's all good. We had a lovely picnic on our Amsterdam quilt. 

Independence is also a state of mind... Dave just finished up his postdoc and I turn in my thesis this week. Times they are a-changing. It will be strange to not head over to campus for work anymore, but we're excited for our next big adventure! Look out world, here we come.