I seamed them all together — I had decided to knit individual large squares, rather than knit every little square on, so that I could get a specific grain on the pattern, which in retrospect was extraordinarily prissy and stupid and I don't want to talk about it any more — remember how I said the ends would be epic?
I wasn't kidding.
I finished off one or two of the large squares — which is something — but then I got extraordinarily bored and needed pre-bedtime knitting, so I decided to pick up the stitches for the edging instead and knit on that.
It's going a little slowly. Each side has around 145 stitches in it — I wasn't terribly fussy about how many I picked up — so it's not fast knitting by means. Also, the longest circular needle I had was 80cm, so the blanket is all bunched up and I can't spread it out to show you what it looks like. Nor is it commute-friendly knitting because, while it is sufficiently brainless, I generally don't want to haul 144 teeny mitred squares on the streetcar with me. So it's at-home knitting, exclusively, which is slowing it down even more.
And by the time I finish, I will still need to weave in the ends.
...
I also finished the Aeolian shawl, which Ravelry tells me I've been working on since July 12, 2010. Granted, it was never meant to be a fast knit; I had wanted a challenge and Estonian lace shawls don't tend to be transit knitting (although I made an exception last week), but still. It's a well-travelled shawl, too: I brought it to Las Vegas and Iceland (where I did not knit on it once. I may have knit a row on the plane — but really, only one).
It wasn't just the knitting that was epic, though. I finished it on Saturday — in the end, it took me over an hour to cast off. We were at a friend's house, and the only thing big enough and flat enough for blocking in my house right now is the bed, so I decided to block it on Sunday morning.
However, I slept in a little, and by the time I had soaked the shawl and had had breakfast, a friend had come over to help with the renovations. I didn't want to leave him to work while I fiddled with a shawl, so I left it soaking in the Eucalan and went to paint, planning to block it later. But then Pd pointed out that it wasn't going to have a chance to dry properly before bed if I did it after work, so I woke up early this morning, and:
It took me an hour. I was kind of late for work. It's not like I could just stop. I even ran out of T-pins, and had to dig into my sewing kit for the dressmakers' pins. Each point had five pin points:
... which I didn't even stretch out properly; some of them overlap each other. You see how the nice rounded bays between the main points are bunched up instead of laying flat, as they're supposed to. I couldn't stretch it out any more, though; the thing has taken over the whole bed.
The yarn is Fleece Artist Saldanha, a limited edition yarn I got at the Frolic and, as always with Fleece Artist, I have no clue what the colourway is. Whatever it is, I don't think they make it any more; none of their 2011 colourways have this much pink in them. I have no idea how big it is, exactly; just that it's gigantic (obviously). I think I love it. Everything hinges on the blocking at this point.
...
And now, I have no knitting. This is so weird. I underestimated how long it would take me to finish all the squares for the blanket — or maybe I just didn't think it through. But I am supposed to be knitting from stash, exclusively, and it's been put away because of the renovations. Also, I don't have a pattern lined up, and the needles are underneath a drop sheet right now. I had been knitting on a laceweight Whispy Cardigan (Rav link) until recently, but that's been finished, too. Actually, I'm wearing it right now — I finally got around to blocking it last night, but it didn't dry completely, so for the first part of the day I've been walking around smelling like eucalyptus-scented wet wool. Nice.
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