It's been a busy and rather tiring few days (how does that happen on a holiday weekend? how?) so I was lazy and I have nothing but iPhone pics for the blog today. I don't even have the fancy iPhone, I have a 3. Not a 3gs, mind you. A plain old cheapy iPhone 3. Suffice it to say, the camera is merely adequate at best. Nevertheless! It will have to do.
I celebrated the holiday by laboring (get it?) on my Katanya shawl in utter determination to get it finished. There is this problem with shawls knit from the neck down, that by the time you are nearing the end, each row seems to take an eternity. I find this very discouraging when I'm knitting on weeknights and can't get through more than a row or two a night because it takes an hour or more to do a given row, so I generally counteract this frustration by working like a fiend on the weekends to get some visible progress. In this case, I was close enough to the end of this shawl that I had some hope that I could finish it over the weekend, saving myself from the tear-inducing weekday slog.
The bind-off for this shawl is supremely clever but also interminable and rather time consuming, so I was hoping if I got all the charts done by Sunday, I could do the bind-off on Monday. When that didn't happen, when I went into Monday with two rows of the chart to go (one very fiddly pattern row and then the endless WS purl row back), I thought, it's not going to happen. There's no way I'm going to get through these AND the bind-off. Especially since SOMEONE invited me to go to the yarn store and I lost knitting time to fondling some Neighborhood Fiber Company fingering weight silk that was to DIE for. The colors shone so brightly they practically glowed in the dark, and the yarn was so SOFT. Some of that WILL be mine someday. But I digress.
Anyway, I knit on the way to the yarn store (I wasn't driving, don't worry) and I knit on the way back from the yarn store, and then I ran inside and threw some laundry in the washer and sat down to knit some more. I knit and I knit and I knit and then I started binding off and I thought, I will NEVER get this done. Especially because I had some issues with the bind off at first. I don't do well with counting bind-off stitches, and counting was more or less required, so I kept getting confused and ripping back because I just had no idea where I was. Then I gave up on counting, figured out how I thought the pattern was supposed to line up (Romi is so darn clever it hurts) and just did that. I really didn't think I would finish. I thought I was going to have to quit before I even got to the halfway mark, but finally, finally, I hit a rhythm and got going and suddenly it was 10 p.m. and I looked at what I had left, and I was so close that I could not, simply COULD NOT, stop knitting. So I kept going and finished the bind-off at 11 p.m. (not as dramatic as finishing at 3 a.m., but I'm just as happy that way). And so, my Katanya is done. Sadly, since I finished it so late, I have only this pitiful little iphone pic of the crinkly, unblocked shawl to show you:
Expect something more spectacular next week. But do you see the edging on the shawl? So darn clever, I'm telling you, I can't stand it.
I did do one other thing this weekend, and that was, start my Kleio, and while I haven't gotten very far, I present to you here, the evidence of my infant Kleio:
I have been watching the Ravelry knitalong with a certain amount of envy for everyone that is so far ahead of me, but I had just hit that critical mass point on Katanya where I was so close to being done that I couldn't put it down. But now I am looking forward to some sweet, sweet garter stitch - at least until I get to the braids that separate the garter from the lace section. Should be interesting.
Oh, and here's at least a little proof that I did all that frogging I said I was going to do, although I forgot all about it the day I blogged and vowed to go home and do it that night. But, still! Frogging was done!
Frogging that hat specifically was a little difficult, I have to admit. It seemed a waste of all the work that went into it, but really, I hated working on the darn thing, the yarn clung to the needles like it had claws - I even had trouble getting the needle out of the darn thing so I could frog it! I didn't even particularly like the colors together. It would have made ABSOLUTELY no sense to keep it since I'm sure I would never have finished it. Frogging got easier the further I went, though, and the less it looked like a hat and the more it looked like a pot holder. After that, the frogging was easier. I was positively gleeful while I frogged the chocolate waffle scarf. I did get a little stuck on the KSH shawl. Mohair has a reputation for being really difficult to frog, and the reputation is well deserved. I gave up on it in frustration after a while, frogged everything else, and just sort of shoved that shawl on the corner of the couch to deal with later. Much later. But, as I was frogging it I did see more mistakes than I had originally thought existed in the shawl, so I feel much better about my frogging decision in that situation.
The bind-off for this shawl is supremely clever but also interminable and rather time consuming, so I was hoping if I got all the charts done by Sunday, I could do the bind-off on Monday. When that didn't happen, when I went into Monday with two rows of the chart to go (one very fiddly pattern row and then the endless WS purl row back), I thought, it's not going to happen. There's no way I'm going to get through these AND the bind-off. Especially since SOMEONE invited me to go to the yarn store and I lost knitting time to fondling some Neighborhood Fiber Company fingering weight silk that was to DIE for. The colors shone so brightly they practically glowed in the dark, and the yarn was so SOFT. Some of that WILL be mine someday. But I digress.
Anyway, I knit on the way to the yarn store (I wasn't driving, don't worry) and I knit on the way back from the yarn store, and then I ran inside and threw some laundry in the washer and sat down to knit some more. I knit and I knit and I knit and then I started binding off and I thought, I will NEVER get this done. Especially because I had some issues with the bind off at first. I don't do well with counting bind-off stitches, and counting was more or less required, so I kept getting confused and ripping back because I just had no idea where I was. Then I gave up on counting, figured out how I thought the pattern was supposed to line up (Romi is so darn clever it hurts) and just did that. I really didn't think I would finish. I thought I was going to have to quit before I even got to the halfway mark, but finally, finally, I hit a rhythm and got going and suddenly it was 10 p.m. and I looked at what I had left, and I was so close that I could not, simply COULD NOT, stop knitting. So I kept going and finished the bind-off at 11 p.m. (not as dramatic as finishing at 3 a.m., but I'm just as happy that way). And so, my Katanya is done. Sadly, since I finished it so late, I have only this pitiful little iphone pic of the crinkly, unblocked shawl to show you:
Expect something more spectacular next week. But do you see the edging on the shawl? So darn clever, I'm telling you, I can't stand it.
I did do one other thing this weekend, and that was, start my Kleio, and while I haven't gotten very far, I present to you here, the evidence of my infant Kleio:
I have been watching the Ravelry knitalong with a certain amount of envy for everyone that is so far ahead of me, but I had just hit that critical mass point on Katanya where I was so close to being done that I couldn't put it down. But now I am looking forward to some sweet, sweet garter stitch - at least until I get to the braids that separate the garter from the lace section. Should be interesting.
Oh, and here's at least a little proof that I did all that frogging I said I was going to do, although I forgot all about it the day I blogged and vowed to go home and do it that night. But, still! Frogging was done!
Frogging that hat specifically was a little difficult, I have to admit. It seemed a waste of all the work that went into it, but really, I hated working on the darn thing, the yarn clung to the needles like it had claws - I even had trouble getting the needle out of the darn thing so I could frog it! I didn't even particularly like the colors together. It would have made ABSOLUTELY no sense to keep it since I'm sure I would never have finished it. Frogging got easier the further I went, though, and the less it looked like a hat and the more it looked like a pot holder. After that, the frogging was easier. I was positively gleeful while I frogged the chocolate waffle scarf. I did get a little stuck on the KSH shawl. Mohair has a reputation for being really difficult to frog, and the reputation is well deserved. I gave up on it in frustration after a while, frogged everything else, and just sort of shoved that shawl on the corner of the couch to deal with later. Much later. But, as I was frogging it I did see more mistakes than I had originally thought existed in the shawl, so I feel much better about my frogging decision in that situation.
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