Finish it!

This year in my online Icelandic knitting group Garnaflækja we got fed up with our unfinished projects and decided to give each other a little support to get them finished.



I made this shawl last summer, while traveling from Ohio to California and back again (to Ohio) on a road trip. The knitting was no problem. Shawls are the perfect travel project, especially this one since it has a lot of stockinette stitch. You start with the outer border, which is knit back and forth into a long band, then you pick up stitches on the edge and knit the lace panel. After that it's a smooth sailing, where the frequent color changes keep you interested (mile after mile after mile - 500 miles a day). Top it off with a picot trim at the top and voila, you are done!



However, as smooth sailing as the knitting the shawl was, it's been sitting in a zip-lock bag for 6 months now, unblocked. I even got blocking wires for my birthday 2 months ago and the shawl remained unblocked. Until this weekend, when I finally got it out of its plastic bag, washed it and blocked it. Blocking with wires, rather than pins, is a dream. It still is a lot of work, but once you have threaded the wire through all the picots and tips of the shawl you don't have to adjust all the pins to stretch it, you just move the wire. It's such a luxury :)



I've had the yarn for a long time (well 2 years at least). It was the rare occurrence of me actually buying yarn without having something planned for it. The reason was that the yarn (Dzined- Ravelry link) is from a local independent dyer and she was quitting her dyeing business so it was the last chance to get any. Her yarn was a gem, wool/hemp blend. Not something you see every day. So I wanted to do something special with it and it took me a long time to find the right pattern. For the longest time I meant to do a capelet with it, but then I saw this pattern for Andrea's shawl and I was sold. There's even enough yarn left for Andrea's mitts.