Resolutions... As if!

I write things and often occasionally regret it.  A few days ago, my "no new year resolutions" post, looks and feels wrong once I got to read it published... I certainly don't mean that there's nothing to "fix" in my life, it's just that I'm hesitant to be optimistic about fixing things.  I guess if I haven't fixed things by now, it must be OK. Please!  Don't put up with my behavior!
As far as knitting, I'm not changing... in fact, before I got the last post published, I did this:

Look familiar?  It should... it's my KAL shawl from earlier this year: Part One and Part Two. That's the shawl (Polaris) all bundled up in the netting.  As I unravel it and re-knit it, I'm trying to capture the beads as they are set free.  The purpose?  I'm making a second attempt at a LOOOOOSE cast on.  I use three different cast-0n's and I have NO idea which one I used.  Lace weight... really difficult to see (so why do I bother?).

Tip for me and anyone else:  if you are taking notes about your projects, make a note about what type of cast-on you use.  

It has been quite frustrating to find that it wasn't stretchy enough for beautiful points at the bottom of the shawl, and I discovered a strange phenomenon*:  My cast-on stitches slide around.  Hard to describe but on the two shawls I knitted this year, I discovered that I could pull the stitches from side to side, like they are sliding on a single strand of yarn.  Some day I'll figure out what that's all about, in the meantime, it's no good for forming points on shawls.

Before I started for real, I did a little swatch/trial run of three different cast-on methods.  One is my normal cast-on that I learned from day one which involves a finger, a needle and a long-tail.  I suspect that this is the cast-on I used.  Then I tried a stretchy cast-on that a friend recommended, and I have never used before.  She found it here in video form.  It IS very stretchy but since I haven't seen it before, it might be a bit... ummm, too stretchy, and odd looking.  So I tried out number three which is a stretchy cast-on that I saw Nancy Bush demonstrate (Estonian?) for the top of socks.  I've used it a lot, and it's very pretty!

Estonian double cast on

And it won... So I finished Row 1, which is really the second row after cast-on and now I remember why I knitted right along on this project:  The beads!  I love to see them, and and and... well, hopefully I will stay motivated.

*Another phenomenon:  I have discovered that I've been mispronouncing "phenomenon" and therefore can't spell it without looking it up in google.  I always start with "phenomenom" and wonder what's wrong!  Never too old to learn to speak and spell!  happy new year!!