While Mom waits for me to visit next week to move forward on the dress, I thought I would add an update on some of the accessories.  contrary to popular belief, I am not making Mom do all of the work on my outfit for the celebrations--just most of it.

While she has been skipping along, mastering advanced couture techniques with great ease, I have been struggling epically with rudimentary knitting as I try to make a shawl to accompany the dress.  The plan was to make this shawl, but the pattern I have includes beads.  We got some beautiful, slightly off white, baby alpaca yarn, and clear beads with silver on the inside. 

It started off looking pretty scraggly, in part because the yarn is nearly lace weight, while the pattern calls for sock weight yarn.  As I've moved along, it's started to look a bit better.  It's a bit hard to show the full thing, since it is still on needles, but it looks roughly like this:

If you look closely, you can see there is a knobby pattern that includes bead near the bottom, followed by a couple rows of plain garter stich.  I'll be doing the knobby pattern three times, separated by the garter stich.

If it continues to improve as I go, I think I'll be alright, but feel free to suggest other cover ups (homemade or otherwise) in the comments section!