Finished!

Oh, I am pleased. I am so very pleased. This afternoon when I should have been doing other things (like tending my pathetic excuse for a garden), I charged through the i-cord on the top of the Pacific Northwest shawl. I’d finished the last of the Endless Edge Scallops over coffee this morning (they actually started going pretty quickly by the end, there), and thought I had hours and hours left because of the i-cord.

Oh, the whining! You would not believe how much whining I did over that i-cord…it looks awesome, though, makes for a very nice, finished look at the top.

Once I got started on it, it went by in a flash. Seriously faster than I expected – in about an hour, I’d finished the whole thing and it was taking a quick ride on the ‘silk’ setting of my front load washer.

And then, the blob became this:



The magic of blocking strikes again.

The only thing I’m not 100% delighted with is that the patterns don’t show as nicely in “real life” as they do here. The variegated yarn kind of makes them vanish – I don’t think the ‘seagulls, pine trees, silver dollars, waves, bubbles and fish’ thing is going to be that obvious when it’s being worn around town. If I do this again, I’ll try a solid color.

But frankly, the colors are not being done justice here, either. They are rich purples, surprises of orange and red, flashes of yellow, some rich royal blues…gorgeous, gorgeous colors.

I’m in such a happy knitting-head space that I took Lillehammer out of the penalty box and got back to work on it. Pulled out the sleeve back to where I messed things up and started fresh.

I think we’ve forgiven each other. Or at the very least, when I took the main sweater out of my knitting basket and looked at it, I found myself saying, “This really is a stunning pattern, and how lovely that dusky green is at the hems…”

And then the wool obligingly frogged and gave me two inches of quick sleeve-growth while we watched the new Spongebob episode (sadly, I was not forced by the children) and the news.

This is the knitting equivalent of kissing and making up.

Hopefully, I’ll have some progress pictures to post on that project soon…