Knitting Sprint - Tour de France KAL

I enjoy a good challenge and I have been very slack these past few years so I thought that for the KAL I would attempt something that I hadn't tried before. Originally I thought that a toe up sock would be the answer (or possibly even a pair) - but I realised that since I'm still in the midst of Sock Wars (the restart) that I had had enough of socks for the while. So thoughts turned to other things. Would it be some lovely sexy French inspired undies - a bit of Oh La La for the reward for nights of knitting?. It tickled my fancy but I am also trying to lose weight and most of us know what it's like to spend hours getting a garment just right and then for it not to fit, so I thought I'd hold off for the moment on that idea.

Then I was talking to my BF, the very lovely Lauren. She was saying that she wanted a lacy, gothy, cobwebby, long sleevey shrugy type of a thing - in black and could I knit one for her. For her birthday. On the 26th July. This was a gift I thought in so many ways.

So I started to think how I could tie it into the Tour de France KAL - well, I could reasonably still wear the polka dot jersey as lace is a bit of a mystery to me but I wanted it to be more French. So I was idling and realised that France was and is known for it's lace. There was even a law passed in Italy in the 17th century because so many of the lace makers were heading to France. It seems that if they didn't return to Italy then their goods and land were forfeit. So I got to thinking about lace and France. Did a search on Google and lo and behold one of the places the Tour passes through made lace - Loudun. The Tour arrives during the 5th stage (the longest of the race this year).

So there, the reason for my choice - I think that I am mad