Another KAL! I joined the Booknits ravelry group a few weeks before this KAL was announceed, good timing! I've never knitted one of her patterns, but, judging by the forum posts, they seem very popular.
So I've dived in. I can't believe I have two MKALs going on when I ought to be knitting Christmas gifts!
I bought the actual yarn too, Fyberspates Faery Wings. I have lots of 4ply stash, mainly though in lone 100g skeins, and I needed two skeins for this KAL.
I had my doubts though.
1) One of the fibres is kid mohair. I tend to avoid mohair. I once made a kid silk haze wrap, lovely, but not great next to my skin!
2) The colour I chose was magenta. A bit worried it might be that bright girly pink.
Well, on both counts I'm pleased. The yarn has a large proportion of silk, which seems to eliminate the itchiness of the mohair. And the colour is not so pinky pink. In fact, when it arrived at work two people commmented on it being a nice colour.
The colour is slightly more blue than these photos show. What I think of as magenta!

I needed more beads of course. One of the stores mentioned in the group was Crystals and Ice in Cardiff. I know zilch about beads. I know I use size 6/0 for 4ply and dk, and size 8/0 for lace and 4 ply (at a push!) but size 5/0 triangular beads? I had to phone them up and ask them about their descriptions, like an idiot. The guy was so friendly, and even asked me if I was knitting a Boo-knits pattern, as they had had a lot of sales in these and size 6/0 beads (bet lots of calls too!).
I wanted sparkle rather than obvious,and he recommended rainbow beads. Of course I bought three lots, some pink, some silver lined and some rainbow. The pink ones go well but don't really stand out. The silver lined ones are pretty and silvery, but I like the rainbow best for this project. Clear, but sparkly.
Clue one is just knittin a 14 row pattern repeat, no lace or beads. Very monotonous and it took me forever. I started off with diffeent needles, couldn't work out if I wanted bamboo, metal, straights or circulars. Originally I went with the recommended needle sizes, and the fabric was fine, but I worried that it would be too wide once blocked, so I've gone down a few sizes. It's still wide, but a teeny bit 'tighter'.
I used the whole skein, did 18 repeats plus the ten rows stated.

Clue 2 was shorter, involved lace and beads, and hence was really interesting!