And this is why I rarely mess around with gauge swatches...

So you'll remember how a couple of weeks ago I learned that my friends' mom was diagnosed with metastatic amelanotic melanoma.

(By the way, if you can say that five times fast without massively flubbing it, I think you automatically get admitted to an Oncology fellowship. If you say it in front of a mirror Biggie Smalls appears and gives you skin cancer.)

(Yes, that whole joke was in very poor taste. We doctors love our gallows humor defense mechanisms...)

(Anyway.)

So, since I can't actually cure cancer and am in fact pretty much powerless to help in any way at all (see above gallows humor), I picked up my needles. And began knitting a shawl. Because interferon doesn't make your hair fall out, and besides, she's been part of our social "family" for nearly fifteen years now, and very dear to me for at least the last twelve of those (I don't think I knew her very well until my friends actually started dating). She's a good lady. She deserves something warm and cuddly. So I had this Cherry Tree Hill marl in my stash. It was like 500 y and I thought, ah, this will work.

So I cast on 220 stitches, and worked and worked and knit and knit and knit and even put a little design in on the bottom.

And I started worrying that it was going to be a little short. Which I kind of figured, which is why I'd cast it on width-wise instead of height-wise. And so as the yarn began to run out, I started worrying that it was going to be too short and too narrow.

Well, it is a little short (I stole Barb's cork-for-size-perspective device, here). It's about 14 inches, top to bottom.

And close to eight feet long.

Frack.

I even did a damn gauge swatch. It was supposed to be about 5, 5 1/2 feet. Comfortable to wrap up in, but, you know, not actually long enough to TRIP OVER.

Here's another size-perspective device.

If it were symmetrical, it'd be a dandy table runner.

But, alas....I wasn't trying to knit a table runner. And as a shawl...well...

So I can't decide what to do with this. I might just keep it as a scarf. I might rip it out and start over again. I started knitting a new one, but I pulled this green mohair out of my stash to use and I'm a little worried. I was thinking "frothy" and I have a bad feeling it might come out looking more along the lines of "Muppet pelt". And it's sure not washable. I may just stop and pick up a couple skeins of Homespun on my way home tomorrow. Every prayer shawl ministry on Earth seems to make that stuff work.