One more sleep until I can sleep

Persian Tiles shawl for Grandma

Slightly before the commute ended last night, all the knitting of the main shawl got completed:

(this was actually taken after all the crochet bind-off, but you can't tell)

I was indeed able to cut down the number of rows I had to do by 50 and still get the length measurement called for in the pattern. For the first time I am actually grateful for my screwy row gauge. And BTW Aven, you are completely right, I meant earlier that my row gauge was 32/10cm, not 36/10cm. I screw that logic up all the time, I'm constantly having to think hard about whether fewer stitches or rows per inch means a bigger piece or a smaller piece. Pretty sad, considering that in many other ways I'm fairly smart, but there you go. That's where my brain falls down.

And then came the somewhat scary part.

This is the steek:


This is the steek on crochet:


Any questions?

(The 2.75mm crochet hook you see is my own - we stopped off at an evil mass retailer which shall remain nameless so I could buy one. Ordinarily we never shop there, but in rare times of great need or if we can't get something elsewhere without ridiculous effort - more on that elsewhere in today's blog entry - we cave. This was a time of great need because I had to start the steeking process ASAP and because we didn't want to delay DD's bedtime by 20 minutes going somewhere less evil and more Canadian. If I had any intelligence or foresight I would have bought one last night at Lettuce, but I do not, so I did not. Megan, my apologies. I am sure I can rationalise something else to buy from your gorgeous shop in the future.)



Geez, those edges are nervous-making. But there is a payoff:


Glorious. Even with all the curling edges. But I'm taking care of that:


That's one edge, about half done. And that's when I decided to be an intelligent person and go the hell to bed...or at least to start the download of all the pictures to my blog as a prelude to going to bed.

Will I finish in time for tomorrow? Remembering that I need time to block it and have it completely dry? Will I have to abandon sleep entirely tonight? Only time will tell...

Dress socks for DH

Also while at the evil mass retailer which shall remain nameless, I picked up the following:



This purchase comes under the heading of "can't get it anywhere else without ridiculous inconvenience" and thus alleviates my guilt at having handed over my hard-earned money to a non-Canadian merchant with questionable business practices. Our local Zellers consistently has an unbelievably crappy yarn selection, even by comparison with other Zellerses, and while I did once see this yarn available for sale there, all subsequent visits (and there have been many) have convinced me that they no longer carry this particular product in this particular colour...which I very much want to use for DH's Father's Day socks. Shhh.