Finished Object Dance

As of this morning, the Peacock Shawl is finished and blocked. Good thing too, because the office party this is going to be worn to is tomorrow.

There's been alot of work done since Thursday. On Thursday not much knitting was done. I did laundry, hand wash, and went to see a matinee of the new Harry Potter with Himself. I'm glad I went. This movie seemed better done thant the last one. Of course with the last one I made sure to read the book before seeing the movie, and thus was conscious of how much had been cut. This time I went to see it cold, and didn't miss much.

Friday I faced up to the niggle about the middle section and ripped back about 10 rows. Something was off and the more I fudged the more I spread it around. So, by the end of the evening Friday, I was just beyond where I had left off that morning, but it was right.

Saturday I finished it off, did the crochet border and blocked it. I don't have good crochet skills, but I made it through this one. I was concerned that my chains of 8 would be longer at the end of the row than the beginning, thereby making the loops disporportionally large, but it stayed even. On the right we have the pre-blocking not looking like much picture.

Here we have me putting the blocking wires along the straight top right half of the shawl. As the shawl turned out too big for the twin futon to hold for blocking, I decided to do one half at a time.
Himself, even though he had decided to celebrate finishing on my behalf starting with dinner and continuing through the evening, was still helpful taking pictures and handing me pins. He had my share of the bottle, since I knew that blocking is something you don't want to do when you're wobbly.

Side view of pins in each and every one of those little crochet loops.

I'm not sure exactly what Himself was trying to show here, other than general setup and view of the knitting. At least it's in focus, even if he wasn't.

I think you can see the patterning more clearly in this.

So, blocking the right half took from roughly 8:30 - 9:00 p.m. First a good dunk in a cold water sink, a stomp in a towel to squeeze out the better part of the moisture, pinning out the right side, and then a quick respray to make sure everything was evenly damp.

At midnight it was still slightly damp so I decided to leave what to do with the left half until morning. Doesn't help that at about 10 I was 49 and even after 1/2 a pint of Ben & Jerry's didn't feel much improved. Was not about to deal with how to ensure that the left half would be blocked to the same size and at the same tension as the right half.

Got up this morning and realized there was a line of reflection down the middle. Re-dampened the left half, put blocking wires along the top edge, folded it over, pulled the left half loops over the T-pins for the right half, gave it a 2nd good spray and did my best to leave it alone. It was pretty much dry by noon when we had to get back to Cambridge. The bottom middle was a little wonky, not least because it curved over the edge of the futon. Once here, I spread it out so the bottom was straight and the motifs spread out, redampened and went to the concert. When I came back, all was well.

Leaving me to wonder what to work on next. There's the fischu to get back to, the abandoned kitten (still needing that last limb), other things that want to get started...... and defensive knitting for visiting the potential in-laws to think about in a week and a half.