Amazing Lace

I hope my faithful readers (insert low-readership joke here) will forgive me if I continue the hymn theme for one more post. The Auction Shawl, for which I have neglected many things in my life — family, housework, sleep, blogging — is finished and on the blocking board as I type. Hallelujah! as some guy named George said.

On Wednesday I had coffee, that is coffee and knitting, with Julie, followed by knitting group with Ruth, Anne, Dale and Judy. Everyone said, "What a lovely shawl, but it needs to be [length] longer" — [length] varying between one and two feet. I had previously determined that my absolute maximum repeats per day was about three and a half (a repeat being about two inches long), which is how I ended up scaling back the originally intended 29 repeats to 27 and finally resigned myself to 25 because I just had no more repeats in me. I bound it off (who invented this infernal forever-taking bind-off? um, that would be me), wove in the ends (all 44 of them), and took it upstairs to block. It was a little over four feet long, that is Not Long Enough.


This is the twin bed in the guest room: plenty of room for shawl and cat. I could show you a close-up of the shawl at this point, but you've seen all you need to. No one would pay actual money for this thing.

I gave it its ritual bath, spread out the blocking board (5 feet 8 inches marked off, plenty for a poor minishawl), and began pinning.


Same bed, more shawl, less cat. I am far from being the first to witness the Miracle of Blocking, but, like a rainbow, it's no less wondrous every time I see it.

I'm especially pleased with the border.



Someone please bid on this, or I shall cry.