Here a stitch, there a stitch...

NEWS FLASH: Ruffle Edgings cause insanity!

Here are some pictures of my shawl/wrap. I am finally done with the body (yay!) but am now on the ruffle edging which is taking FOREVER to complete. Since I used different yarn than the pattern called for and changed the pattern accordingly, the body of the wrap was 400+ stitches per row instead of 250. This in itself makes for a long row. Add to that for the ruffle edge a whole bunch of "M1"s and "K1 in front & back of stitch"s and you end up with about 1000 stitches to a row. Ok, that's a lot but whatever, it's do-able. (I just barely was able to fit all those extra stitches on the circ.) Then comes the final row of the edge: "Cast on 4 stitches, bind off 5 stitches" until row is completely bound off. In other words, to work just one of those 1000 stitches on my needle I have to work another 4 first. A little quick math will show that I must work 5000 stitches to bind of the final row. But do not make the mistake of thinking I will be done at this point...that was only the top edge. I still have the bottom and side edges which will all be done the same way. WOOHOO!! So, on the one hand I have the not-so-nice prospect of working another approximately 15,000 stitiches (insane) to finish all the edging, but on the other hand, it does look really nice now that I've got about 1/3 of the top edge bound off. Hopefully the pics below are clear enough that you can get a good idea of it's look. Actually, I'm pretty happy about how this is turning out. Since I substituted yarn and changed the pattern and altered a few things I was hoping I really had done my homework well and it would all look really nice when done. Though I don't want to congratulate myself too early, I really like how it's looking. I also tried it on in the car on the way to our vacation camping trip last week it was so soft and warm and looked very stylish with the earrings I was wearing (gold chandeliers). I have hope that I may have made something that is not a fashion wreck! For all you non-style conscious people out there, there is (I think) hope...

(By the way, thanks for the nice welcome back comments!)

Decreases: (2 columns, splitting the wrap into thirds)

The ruffle edge is falling over the top of my foot:

Ruffle edge & diamond pattern:


Soon (am I crazy?) I'll be able to get this off the needles and display it flat!

You may be able to see the red carrying-weight strands coming off the bottom edge. My original plan was to knit this in every few rows but after one row of that I was no fan and decided to wait and weave it in using a needle after the wrap was all done. Being almost done now, I am not sure I am actually going to do that either. I rather like it as is and may just cut the threads out out of the bottom. Or, on the other hand, I may just weave the carrying yarn in to only the ruffle edging. Not quite sure yet what will look best.

There is also no question now as to blocking the wrap. I will not block it for the simple reason that the edging is not at all stretchy. Really that's no problem though because I think I like the diamond pattern as it's showing now, w/out blocking, just fine.

Well, that was a lot of blather...have a good night!

posted by Mrs BJ @ 12:39 AM