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Saturday 23 March 2013

Spring Celebration Wrap

This was a long time in the making but now that it's done, I think it was worth the effort.  I bought the yarn, and I think the pattern as well, on my last birthday.  August 11.  I worked away at this until sometime in October when one of my dogs gave the yarn a good shake and the yarn cake exploded.


This was a mental setback more than anything as I couldn't bear the thought of having to untangle 350 meters of lace weight yarn.  So it was packed up and put into a bag where I could forget about it and focus on the Christmas knitting where I turned out three more scarves, a cowl and two pairs of socks.


Then on a long break over Christmas I decided to get this out and see how much damage the dog did.  It took just over an hour to wind everything back up and get it all sorted again.  I worked away on this for a while and got to the point where I thought "OK, just one and a half more repeats (60 rows) and you'll be done".  Except it was two and a half repeats.  100 rows.  I don't really know why, but that was crushing.  I stopped again and knit another scarf, learning how to add beads while I was at it, and two more pairs of socks.  It was about this time that I dubbed the scarf "the Never-Ending Stole" and it was about five minutes after that that I realized that if I never worked on it, of course it would never be done.


So I got it out again and plodded along but found it hard to focus - not a good thing when knitting lace.  Frequent breaks were necessary but I'd find myself cruising through Ravelry to see what else I wanted.  My company's new office space is considerably cooler than the last location so I wanted fingerless mitts.  I went stash diving and found some lovely worsted weight wool that would be perfect and found a pattern that I thought would work well with the yarn.

But that wasn't getting the stole done.


I've never really lost the drive to finish something and I don't really know what the problem was here.  It isn't a boring pattern, but neither is it difficult.  You do need to pay attention but it's easy enough that you can watch TV without making mistakes. I plodded on with it.

And then, on the second day of spring, it was done.  I put it aside until the weekend when I could have good light to do the grafting.


In celebration of the arrival of Spring, I'm called this Spring Celebration Wrap.

Happy Spring.

14 comments:

  1. That is just gorgeous! What a beautiful job of knitting you've done, and untangling. What is the pattern? Is it available anywhere? Sorry I should probably find it on your blog back where you started it.

    Anyway, Congratulations!

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    1. Hi Zippiknits,
      Thanks so much for your kind words. The pattern is "Autumn Arbor Stole" by Anne Hanson of Knit Spot.

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  2. It turned out lovely Alison! I look forward to seeing it in person.

    Kelly

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    1. I'll be sure to bring it next week for "Show and Tell".

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  3. It's lovely! I admire anyone who can knit lace. I have tried and am a miserable failure.

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    1. Thank you very much! This is a new skill for me - I've only really been knitting lace for just over a year. This is by no means my first piece, but it is the largest I've done. As for failures...like so many things, my first attempts were pretty laughable.

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  4. Hurray! Congratulations on a beautiful finished piece!

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    1. Thanks so much Lisa. I'm very pleased to have this done and wearable.

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  5. Only an hour! Wow. Funny how something that doesn't take that long (in the scheme of things) can be so demoralizing and intimidating. I'm glad you persevered, though, since you got lovely results!

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    1. You've hit it exactly - this was terribly demoralizing but as you say it was very fast to fix. I think there is a good life lesson here about perseverance that I can carry with me.

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  6. Beautiful. That colour is going to look fantastic on you.
    Pam

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    1. Thank you! I look forward to wearing this. It's big enough that I can cover my shoulders and arms and still have some of the scarf for draping. Perfect for when the world expects you to be in short sleeves, but you still find it too cold.

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  7. So pretty. So soft. You will look gorgeous wearing this.

    Mara

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    1. Thanks Mara - looking forward to the opportunity to do so.

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