Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Knitting Intervention

I experienced a knitting intervention this past week.  Two actually.  In the same night.  Completely unrelated and uncoordinated. 

Knit Night re-started after the summer hiatus.  The first question posed to me was about the Duchess Shawl.  I had to admit that I had been a bit of a knitting slut lately.  Very slutty.  "No last names, up again the wall in the restaurant parking lot" type of sluttiness.  (Insert roar of laughter here.  We are a wild and crazy crowd, we knitters.)  I was informed that next month, I had to bring the shawl with me, finished or not. 

Then, I left to go to the other knitting group, as it was one of the rare months it fell on the same Monday night.  And the first question posed to me was about the Duchess shawl.  Once again, I admitted my recent knitting promiscuity.  (Same line, even funnier second time around, since everyone had a half-drank pint of beer in front of them at the time.)  I received the same admonition that next time (two weeks later, shorter turnaround time), bring the Duchess Shawl with me.

When I got home, I saw the Duchess Shawl still crumpled on my nightstand, alone and neglected.  I had to face realilty:  I wasn't please how the cast off prescribed by the pattern was looking.  It was curling inward.  There was no way I was going to work on a shawl for about 200 hours (not an exaggeration this time, shockingly enough) and not like how the final edge appeared.  Really not the shawl's fault. 

 So I found some leftover scrap yarn, and started test knitting various methods.  I knit a small ruffle, then started wandering the net for different methods, some stretchy, some not. 

Finally, I found one that seemed to not curl as much as the pattern method.  I am hoping that the small curling blocks out. 





I did start casting off Duchess.  One foot down, around 21 feet to go. 

The days are turning cool, the nights are cooler.  It is prime shawl weather. 

It is time to finish Duchess. 

With any luck, in time to show it off at the next meeting of the knitters. 

Today, it is all about the reconciliation.