Nightmares and progress

I had a dream last night that I knit five repeats of an Estonian lace shawl and then noticed a glaring mistake in the second repeat. Let's just say I didn't sleep well last night.

Progress is going faster than expected on the Chevron scarf. I have abandoned it at times for a different project (I'll get to that in a moment), but all things considered, the first half is almost 14" long. Usually, I would expect to have knit more stitches in a week, but considering how repetitive this pattern is, I count myself fortunate that I haven't abandoned it entirely.

Abandoned it entirely is the key word. While I haven't done that, I have begun work on the mother's shawl. She still doesn't know about it -- in fact, I get the impression that she is unhappy about my aunt presumably getting one before her. Which is actually pretty great for me. Who says I can't keep a secret?

I decided on Deborah Frank's Blight for the shawl pattern, instead of Nightsongs, like I had originally been planning. Blight has a more organic shape for its leaves than Nightsongs and I am picky. The yarn is self-striping, which has me worried a little about whether or not it will continue to self-stripe once I get to the high stitch count rows. Future Me can deal with that.

Speaking of my mother, I still have no yarn for the swirl jacket. Mum wants Preciosa Tonal in Stormy and that colorway is out of stock until the end of the month. Actually, she could probably go with any yarn somewhat soft, but I'm dead set on working with that 100% merino goodness. She just picked the color.

As I'm fairly sure I'm going to finish both the shawl and the scarf by the end of this month, my eye has started to wander. The "playing video games while knitting" thing has somewhat backfired, as I very much want to make these for myself.

It's important that I have them. The only thing currently stopping me from snapping up yarn to make them is that I can't find any in the right colors. Either the blue is too light or dark, or the red is too purple. Grey tends to be okay no matter what yarn I look at.

I know the best idea is to go to an LYS and ask them, but I'm not familiar with any in my area yet and I haven't figured out the public transportation system anyway. These are the perils of moving.