Word of the Day: LOVELY

Pink Insanity is finished.

And OH, is it lovely.

OH OH OH OHhhhhhhh so lovely. It went from crumpled mess, to such a lovely flat project. I actually finished this blanket a long time ago- I cast off the final stitch- blocked the blanket- stood back and took it all in….

… aaaaaaaaaaaand hated it. Something was wrong. The blanket was lovely, but the ends… OH the ends were bothering me. The pattern called for a crochet border, but even the crochet border couldn’t save the ends. My issue was that the pattern just ended. The sides are lovely- with the lovely diamond lace pattern, but the ends just felt too abrupt. It’s like your eyes take in the lovely patterning and just when you’re about to exclaim “oh that is just lovely”, you stop because the ends just look unfinished and incomplete. Instead of the “oh that’s lovely” you immediately want to tell me you’re ideas on what I could do to spiff up the ends. In short, the ends needed something, otherwise the blanket just didn’t look finished.

And so I did what I do when I’m forced to decide upon something, I asked EVERY PERSON I KNOW how to fix it. There were some excellent suggestions, particularly from Sylvia in my knitting group, who suggested I pick up the stitches and knit diamonds across. Great idea, but when it came to execution, I failed. Miserably.

And then, I was overcome with madness. MADNESS I say! Because I decided the most viable solution was to undo the cast off and cast ON edges, pick up the stitches and knit in a picot border. Unraveling the cast off edge was a walk in the park- I caught the stitches and knit me a picot border to fold over and stitch. Unraveling the cast ON edge was significantly more tricky, but after some wine and chanting “you can do this, you can do this” to myself, I was able to muster the courage, CUT into the knitting and attempt the impossible.

It didn’t turn out too badly either. The stitching isn’t perfect. If I was able to add the picot at the beginning it would be smooth and beautiful- but instead I was forced t fold the stitches over and sew them down. It’s not exactly how I’d like it to look, but it does finish the blanket nicely and is a vast improvement from where I was.

So there you have it. After all that belly aching, moaning and near tears, this blanket is finished and it is just lovely. (The only thing I could say when I knit this was "lovely"… hence the over-use of that term here.)

Pattern: 0612-1 Hjertesett found in Sandes Lanett 0612 Baby 0-4 booklet
Yarn: Shepherd Baby Wool 3 Ply in Pink (0333) (6.5 skeins)
Needles: US 2.5 or 3 mm (!!!!!)
Notes: I skipped the crochet picot border and instead knit in my own picot border. If I were to do this again, I would not do the picot as an afterthought. This blanket blocks beautifully and in general is a very satisfying finished project. I did, however, have to blow up the charts to a size way bigger, or I would have gone crosseyed!
Listening To: (This is going to be a new section on the blog as I’ve discovered the joys of audio-books and Craft Lit. I thought I’d let you know what I “read” while knitting my project.) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (courtesy of Craft Lit) and The Little Book by Selden Edwards. (ha…. Apparently I like books with “Little” in the title!) Both were excellent, I love Little Women so much that I burned through that book pretty quickly. The Little Book was also excellent, although it took a few weird turns about midway through that left me going “huh?”.

Where can you see this lovely project to which my pictures do it absolutely no justice? Check out the Western Showcase at the Stampede, where I’ve entered it as one of my entries to be judged.

PS. To my husband, who had nicknamed this project my "Stampede 2012" project because he didn’t believe I could finish it. I think you owe me an apology honey!

PPS. This project took me a little over 4 months to complete! Wow. No wonder I was sick of it!