Fine Print?!!

OK. This is just too funny...

My Queen of the Night has been going through an awful LOT of beads, to the point where I realized a little while ago that I would actually have to order a second container of beads in order to finish the piece as I have started it, especially with the intensely beaded picot bind-off around the scalloped edge at the bottom. This seemed strange, though, because the pattern only calls for 300 beads, and the container (which was full at the start) holds almost 400.

>>> Hmmm. <<<

The sudden quandary prompted an investigation. At first I really couldn't figure out what was going on, until my eye happened to fall on a footnote in the pattern, where it says that beads should be placed on every *other* pattern repeat (i.e. every 8th row). Ignoring that instruction, I had simply been following the chart as written, and therefore placing beads every *4th row*. Twice as many beaded pattern repeats means twice as many beads. Q.E.D.

Mystery solved. But now what to do?

The more I think about it, the more I must conclude that there is just NO WAY I am going to rip back and redo the thing, especially with a mohair yarn, which likes to stay put once it's been knitted into place. Besides, the effect of all those sparkly beads against the dark background is strikingly similar to the dramatic star-spangled sky in this famous set design for an 1815 production of The Magic Flute by German artist Karl Friedrich Schinkel. To quote Lady Macbeth, I'm simply going to have to "screw my courage to the sticking-place" and place yet another EarthFaire order.

So my Queen of the Night is going to be extra super-DUPER-glamorous. But it could be worse, right??