Brambleberry Sweater is DONE!

After 3 visits to The Mountain (2009, 2010, and 2011), endless hours at home, three swatches that I blocked (thank you, Brooke), the encouragement of a deadline of the October AKG meeting, and 2 viewings of the last episode of "Lost" before I, too, changed my subscription to Netflix, I can finally say that I have a finished sweater!! It is lovely, it is blocked, it fits, and I have worn it out to the North Georgia mountains where it kept me warm, warm, warm. And best of all (besides the fact that it fits!), it is the perfect orangey-red color that perfectly fits with this time of the year. The yarn is kind of red, but that red that is kind of orange, and there are flecks of yellow in the reddish yarn. So, without further ado, here is my beautiful new sweater in all of its orangey-red cabled glory:

It's almost a work of art, no?

Here's another view, same sweater, from the front, too:

I really can't believe it's done. And I made this!

And really, I must take this opportunity to apologize for the long length of time between posts, from Sept. 11 to now. One of the weekends I spent out of town at my college reunion (25 years!); another visiting an alpaca farm where yes, I did come away with more than just 'paca poo; one Saturday at the Decatur Beer Fest and the next day recovering (no more absinthe. Ever.); and one weekend spent with friends in North Georgia. All these are worthy causes and reasons, and then there's my new day job (part-time, but then my web orders have started to go through the roof which means after-work is spent filling them), so my blogging time has been compromised. Not my project, time, mind you - several pictures will make their ways to this blog very, very soon with accompanying posts. Not this time, though; this time is my long awaited "My Brambleberry Sweater is Done!" post.

So yes, this is the first sweater where I've actually followed all of the experts' advice and BLOCKED my swatch before I selected my needles. Which was an earlier post and has resulted in a class that I'll be teaching in November about gauge. It was a case of using not just the correct needle size (that didn't seem to matter), but using the correct type of needle: the plastic needle made the entire cable just totally collapse and loose its structure, but the wooden needle helped bolster up the cable and keep its "body." Really amazing, that.

And this was the first sweater pattern I've ever come across that has the even-numbered rows as the right rows (knit right to left) as opposed to odd rows being the right rows (wrong side vs. right side of a garment). That called for some interesting verbage from me when I started to knit the sleeves one late-ish night this year at The Mountain and I realized my mistake and had to rip out those eight rows and start again. I mean, it wasn't as though I didn't have notes and arrows to that end! The designer also added selvedge stitches to her pattern, so you cast on 2 extra stitches but the pattern and directions exclude those stitches when telling you what to do. And it's good to have those selvedge stitches because they're needed for the seaming. But more on seaming later.

This pattern was a fairly easy cable sweater to knit: the design remains the same (cable on the 2nd row) for the first 10 or so pattern repeats. A few rows before you begin to decrease for the armholes, you then "walk" the cable over, so that the K4 P2 rib becomes the new cable twist, and continues in this way for 3 or 4 rows until it "walks" back to the original cable pattern. This contributes greatly to the movement and attractiveness of this sweater; some would say rhythm.

Here is the detail from where the cables "walk" and then return to their original journey.
This is a slightly lighter shade than the actual yarn,
but there really are that many colors in this yarn. Amazing.

I did adjust the length of the sweater, as I am a short person and even though I knit the size M (44"), I still needed to shorten the length so that it would not resemble a small dress. This of course caused me some consternation when I began the armhole decreases, but I took copious notes about the adjustments I did to the back that proved handy when I did the front. I also finished knitting the front while listening to the audio version of Watership Down earlier this year in order to keep familiarity with this pattern and also so that I would not be making those crucial armhole-decreases-while-keeping-cable-pattern decisions with adult beverages clouding my judgment.

And as I've posted before, I'm really really really glad that I knit the sleeves at the same time. The slight aggravation of remembering which row I was on and which ball of yarn was minimal compared to the huge aggravation I would have had if I had had to remember which row increase I did when. Oh, and I did not do the cable pattern on the sleeve edges - I learned from my former teacher, Christina, that a cable sweater does not necessarily have to continue its cable pattern under the arm. So I just continued knitting the K4 P2 rib pattern as I increased the sleeves and it made a lot of difference with time, aggravation, and ease of wearing.

Then there was the knitting it together. Before I did so, and starting the day before my birthday and visit to the alpaca farm, I began to weave in the yarn ends. I HATE weaving in yarn ends. It's a pain. It's kind of meticulous, kind of mindless, but you have to pay some attention to what you're doing and it just seems never-ending. *Blech* I wanted to weave in enough so that by the time I had finished sewing up the seams, I wouldn't have that many yarn ends to weave in before I blocked it. *Blech* again. The discipline of martial arts training kicked in here, and I meticulously wove in yarn ends that weren't on the seam line. Some of them, anyway.

Which brings me to seaming. Ah, seaming. There are people who hate to sew up seams. Me, not so much. I don't mind seams - remember, I use to frame needlework and THAT can be meticulous and all-encompassing. But I made the mistake I've made in the past, where I decide what a shame it is to waste all that yarn at the shoulder join, and wouldn't it be better to just knit a portion of the sleeve seam?? Well, no, no it wouldn't. And here's why: it bulks up. No matter how careful you are, no matter how much easing you're doing to the portion closest to where you began to join the sleeve with this method, you're going to wind up with one side flat and one side with 5-10 extra stitches that you need to answer for. So the solution is to take it out and re-try it. And the same thing happens. What is that definition of insanity? I knit one portion of one sleeve during the final episode of "Lost" using this method. The entire 2 hours of the final episode of "Lost." When will I learn??

You guessed it - I put it down, picked it back up, and with that strong martial arts discipline I learned oh-so-many years ago, I started from the edge, made the center of the sleeve ribbing (in between the cables) match with the shoulder seam, for both sleeves, all while re-watching the final episode of "Lost." Inset sleeves are tricky in the best of circumstances, but inset sleeves that include cable/ribbed patterns require meticulous attention to which stitches you are seaming to which. So here is the end result:

Since the seams here are obvious, even to the non-knitter,
I had to be very, very careful with making sure they matched.
Exactly.

And here is a close-up, showing sleeve detail of which I am especially proud:

Sleeve seaming detail

Of course, that meant that I had to weave in and cut off otherwise perfectly good, long yarn ends that all meet at the shoulder join, but I'll just have to get over it.

And another thing of which I am extremely proud are the side seams. They are almost invisible and I really, really have to say I am proud of the extra time I took to make them almost as perfect as any stockinette stitch sweater (I've never seamed on reverse stockinette, a.k.a. purl, stitches before:

Side seam detail. You almost can't see it. Go me!

Then there is the neck. Someday, I may re-knit the neck. The cover picture of this sweater shows a very, very small rolled neck. Not for me. Mine was much longer; almost too long. The neck is knit after the shoulder seams are joined (giving you a vest-like sweater), and this one called for picking up and knitting with smaller needles, starting with a K1P1 rib, then decreasing, then knitting until it reaches where you want it to reach. Which on me, after 6 rounds, was about to the top of my collarbone. Yup, I have a large-ish shoulder-to-neck measurement, and therefore need more neckline than the pattern anticipated. And it's not the pattern's fault, either - it's a by-product of not knitting enough sweaters for myself and knowing how things will finish up. So what this means is, someday I may decide to undo and re-knit the neckline, using the same size needles and continuing with the pattern for at least 2 pattern repeats (2"), then starting on the formal neckline. But not now - now is just for wearing and admiring and receiving (I hope!) complements from those who see me in it. So here's the neckline in question; knitters out there, let me know your thoughts on the necessity of re-knitting this neckline at some point in time:

Longer than I anticipated, this is the rolled-neck ending to this sweater

Oh, and the other amazing thing about this sweater, and another reason I chose to knit the size that was close to my bust size instead of L (48"): it relaxed after I blocked it. I was really beginning to worry that I had knit an M and the sizing gods would punish me by having it be too tight and with too-tight cables. Now that would be embarrassing. But no, it relaxed both out and down, so the sleeves reach a little bit below my wrists, enough for me to pull my hands in when it's cold outside (like in the N. GA mountains), and the horizontal is eased so that it fits comfortably around my 44" (pattern size M) bustline.

Hurrah! It is finished! And just because it's my blog post and I want to, here is the Brambleberry sweater in all of its finished glory (again):

*SIGH*

Starting with Socks

So when I arrive at the Mountain, check in, unpack my one meager bag full of all my winter sweaters, and prepare my many, many project bags for the weekend, I always start knitting on a sock.

Why a sock?

Well, for one thing, they're small. They knit up quickly. After the cast on and joining rounds, there's a lot of "mindless knitting" followed by "thinking knitting" followed by more "mindless knitting" followed by "thinking knitting." Then you finish with scrambling to find directions for the Kitchener stitch, and before you know it, you're done with your sock.

I started knitting a sock as my first project at the Mountain several years ago, when I was learning Intarsia in the round for a sock (from the "Socks for Sandals and Clogs" book) and I wanted the peace and serenity of the Mountain to be present while I started on this seemingly impossible adventure.

It wasn't impossible - it was fun, very very fun. Basically what you do is you knit with the background yarn to the pattern, slip the pattern stitches, knit the ground stitches, and then turn the whole thing around, purling across the pattern stitches while slipping the ground stitches. It can be done with small patterns (about 5 stitches, ground stitch or two, and 5 more stitches) but not with 12 stitch beer hat patterns. Those have to be knit flat, then sew up the seam in the back.

But I digress.

So with the wonderful lightbulbs going off above my head as I sat on the porch outside with other knitters around me to ooooh and aaaah at this cool new technique, I found that I was all jazzed from my new learning experience AND sufficiently calmed down from the exciting drive up to the Mountain to begin to knit on something a little more complicated that night after dinner.

And I do mean exciting - I drive a Neon, and there's a reason for it: it is the best handling car, most fleet and easily manuever-able car I've ever driven since I inherited my Dad's Camero in the 80's. There are twisty windy mountain roads all the way up to the Mountain, and yes, I do drive them as fast as my car can handle them. There is nothing like the feel of a great car hugging the road while it is put through its paces and it, too, revels in the feel of doing what it was designed to do.

But I digress. Again.

Anyway, the next year, I brought some socks to knit on, just regular sock knitting ("mindless knitting") in the round to slow down from the drive and mesh with the energy of the Mountain that year. I used yarn I had bought in Dahlonega while touring that yarn shop with some friends, just some simple yarn, and found that this sort of settling in to be just the thing. I could concentrate better, have more mental energy later that evening, and have something to just knit on in between thinking projects.

This year, I continued the tradition with some yarn I bought in Asheville. Asheville is truly a wonderful city for the arts and many people had told me while I was a shopowner (can you say "jealous about weekend getaways??") about Earth Guild as a wonderful shop to visit. While I was on one of my many weekend getaways post-shopowner life, I helped friends with building their Tiny House and stopped for a few hours in Asheville on the way to their Mountain. All of the customers who raved about Earth Guild - they weren't kidding - no matter what sort of handcraft you like, whether it be spinning or basketweaving or knitting, they have the tools and the expertise to help you with your project and get you started on your next. So much creative inspiration, and I'm so glad I was able to spend some time there at long last, visiting a legend.

To help bring my purchase up to the correct dollar amount to qualify for a 20% discount for my entire purchase, I bought some Trekking yarn for a sock. Liked the color, wasn't sure how the patterning would happen, but I needed a sock for, well, for take along knitting. I started it in time for DragonCon last year (now that the costumers are coming full circle with kimonos and steam punk, there is a room set aside for doing one's fiber arts every morning as costume add-ins or just to sit and knit or tat with friends), then brought its companion to the Mountain to revel in the energy there:


It's got very pretty shades of blues with lots of dark purples for contrast. I've worn it once to work - I buy sandles these days especially so that I can wear my socks with them. I'm discovering, though, that I need to knit socks with gussets in the front to compensate for the difference in size between my ankles and my calves. I do like the length and the marbling of the color.




Here's the companion (not quite completed) with the yarn info. I think you can get a better look at the quality of the coloring with this shot.

The needles are, yes, aluminum, but they are my grandmother's. While I've given away her other aluminum knitting needles to a good cause, I've knit most of my socks with these.



And that, dear readers, is why I knit socks at the Mountain. I'm concentrating pretty hard on very complicated projects and on wonderful conversations, and sock knitting brings just enough *brain sigh* energy to the weekend that I can relax while I'm there.

Mountain Projects - Brambleberry Sweater

I've promised and promised to put these projects on my blog, and now here it is - a Friday afternoon in late April (Good Friday, in fact), and the Mountain is now a happy memory.

But not to worry! That's why blogs exist!

This is the first of several posts about projects I work on at the annual Atlanta Knitting Guild retreat at The Mountain in North Carolina. It is a wonderful, calming, peaceful place, way up at the ankle of the Appalachian Mountains (Atlanta being the foothills, North Carolina would be the ankles, no?). Everyone brings projects that they often cannot work on anywhere else, due to the association with The Mountain, the amount of concentration needed to work on a project, or the help they will receive from other knitters over the long weekend. And that's basically what it is: show up after noon-ish on Friday, snack, knit, eat dinner, knit, begin to taste Knitting Water, and continue knitting into the weee hours of the next day.

Sleep.

Repeat.

For an entire long weekend.

Some other projects I've worked on have been a wedding shawl for my friend and former colleague, for whom I cast on 400 stitches! a project that could only have been accomplished with many stitch markers, the complete silence of other understanding knitters, and a few swigs of Knitting Water.

I also knit Webmaster Bill his two cable-knit sweaters, the first out of Chester Farms yarn out of Virginia, a thick, durable, "wears like iron" wool yarn that is 100% machine washable. I found out while knitting that sweater that you can fudge the fact that you didn't count your rows properly, and can crochet an edging to make the arm decreases look like knit decreases instead of purl-on-the-right-side decreases. You can, you really can . . .

The second was a beautiful off-white sweater featuring yarn from Blackwater Abbey Yarns, available only through the distributor in Colorado (or from Abbey Farm in Ireland). I had had a trunk show with Blackwater Abbey Yarns while my friend was still in my employ - she is a huge fan of the designer Beth Brown-Reinsel who has designed a number of Aran and Guernsey-style sweaters out of this yarn. The yarn is also a traditional Irish Aran yarn, and not at all appealing to the soft scarf crowd, but it still proved to be a fruitful trunk show and one which I wish I could have had again. And many of the sales were to staff and owner, but that's just one of the perks of working in the yarn shop!

So, my project for the Mountain (stay on topic!) was my sweater out of this beautiful, handwash only yarn, using a pattern designed for this yarn (not by BB-R) called "Brambleberry." I used a fall-ish orangey rust yarn, and I did my swatches. Oh, boy, did I do my swatches! But more on that later.

The pattern is a little different, in that the chart is read from left to right on the right side of the pattern, and the reverse on the wrong side. Which is opposite all the other charted patterns I've ever used. Another difference is the reversal of odd-is-right, even-is-wrong row counting. Needless to say, Knitting Water has helped make these pattern differences even more clear, and has taken the sting out of ripping back and re-knitting those rows until I began to focus on the pattern's quirks.

I started this pattern 2 Mountain trips ago, in 2009, with a cast-on and knitting of the back. And you know what? After I figured out the pattern changes, it really was an easy pattern to knit. Seriously. It's only on R2 that you have to cable, and you knit the majority of the body repeating the same 8 rows. Very, very simple for late night conversation.

Then you get to do the traveling cables as you decrease for the arms, a factor which adds its very own magic to the design of the sweater. Some concentration, and no Knitting Water was involved (in fact, I think I did these decreases at home, but I wouldn't swear to it), and it makes the sweater design really cool.

Last year's Mountain stay featured knitting the front of this sweater, and one of the things I wanted to make certain of was that I was a) familiar with the pattern by this year's Mountain stay, and b) ready to start on the sleeves by doing a): finishing the front before I got to The Mountain. Which I did with the help of some very brave bunnies, as featured in that marvelous masterpiece, Watership Down, as a book on tape. Meaning I knitting into the evening and heard one of my favorite books read aloud as only a gifted storyteller can.

As promised, here are the pictures:

This is the back of the Brambleberry sweater. I only wish the color was more true - it's an orangy reddish leaf color.








This is much more true to the actual color of the yarn itself. This is a detail of the sweater. What makes the cables stand out so amazingly is the Z-twist of the yarn - it's spun in reverse. Most yarns and threads produced commercially or privately by spinners create an S-twist. But not this yarn.



This is the front of the sweater. Notice the deep neckline, an indication of it being the front, and also the double-decreasing at both sides while knitting the traveling cables.

I now have greater respect for the professional photographers who make the pictures on patterns look just perfect! It's hard to see the detail, but the traveling cables start right at the arm decreases.




Why this picture of a scrap of knitting, you ask? Why, this is no ordinary scrap of knitting: this is my swatch. I knit it with three different needles, then washed the swatch to see how my individual needle choices would come out. After all, I was going to spend at least 3 years of my life on this project, and I wanted it to be perfect.

You know what I found? Not just the needle size but the needle type makes all the difference with this project. My gauge was the same whatever needle size I used, BTW.

My first needle option was a size 6, since I tend to knit loose. Not so much fun knitting with these needles on a 2-ply Worsted Weight yarn. That's the scrunched up bit at the bottom.

My second needle option was a Bryspun plastic size 7 needle. Soft on the hand and easy to manuver the yarn over and around. Great, I thought, but I'll try one more. Plus, the pattern called for a 7 though my gauge didn't change at all.

My third option was size 8 bamboo. And that made all the difference.

Remember when I said that I had washed and blocked my swatch after I knit it? Well, the portion I knit with the size 6 was all hard to pull - no give whatsoever. But the portion I knit with the nice, soft, easy-to-manuver Bryspun? It turned flat. There was no definition in my cables, they relaxed almost to the point of being just an embellishment on the pattern and not the pattern itself. I could not believe my hands, and the more knitters I've shown it to, the more my reality about using these needles has been correct.

So my final option, of the bamboo size 8's, was right on the money. The cables were crisp and at attention, and maybe because the wood offers resistance to the wool it makes the cables stand up the way they do.

That's my lesson for the day - always, always wash your swatch, and keep knitting on the same swatch so that you can see one variation from the other. Very, very, important.

Oh, and before I sign off, here are the promised sleeves, started this year at the Mountain (I had forgotten that the rows are read reversed, so after 7 rows I poured some more Knitting Water to take the sting out of ripping them out and starting again). And one more thing - I'm knitting both sleeves together/at the same time. This way I can keep up with the pattern and its myriad of increases. Like the ones I forgot right at the very beginning, which is fine because I have small wrists, and heavily increased sleeves would just hang on my wrists like flappy bits of knitted fabric. My arms increase after the elbow, and by golly, that's just where these extra increases are going to go!

Here are the pictures:


There is more knit on them now, of course. My goal here is to finish the sleeves by this autumn, to either knit the pieces together and wear this sweater at The Mountain (it gets pretty darn cold up there, let me tell ya!) or sew it together next year while there.

OK, well, that's my first of these posts of Mountain projects. Will put some more up (I've taken tons of pictures), and hopefully all the posts will be current by the time I go on next year's retreat!

Eat First, then Block

I really, really mentally drafted this piece back in January, after I became inspired to block my Seven Swans shoulder wrap made from Anne yarn following the January AKG meeting and the excellent blocking instructions from Heartstrings' Jackie Ericksson-Sweitzer. Her website is Heartstrings Fiber Arts and you can certainly see the gossamer-y, lightweight, oh-so-tempting pieces she creates out of her very own creative brain. Yummm. She writes all these lovely lacey shawl and sock and wristlet patterns that I carried with great joy and that fascinated many an adventurous knitter into seeing what could be done with all that gorgeous lace yarn.

But then many things happened after that blocking experience, such as a visit from an old friend whom I had not seen since 1982 in London who was on this side of the pond from her home in small-town France; the annual AKG knitting retreat at The Mountain where I started both a cabled sweater for ME from Blackwater Abbey yarns (it's the Brambleberry Pullover made from the color Chestnut that you can see here at the BWA site: Blackwater Abbey Yarns) as well as the long-anticipated Orrenburg Lace Shawl that I bought at TKGA in April 2004 with dear G at my side. I figured that I was a good enough knitter by now to tackle that project, and I am, though just barely. More on those projects as they progress.

Oh, and after the retreat came the temporary position with one of my temp services that lasted for about 10 days. It was great to be in the working world again, feeling like I was earning money from my own labors but someone else's pocket. Plus I had forgotten how much fun it is to listen to sales weasels make their deals!

And then more work on my website, then a 6 week assignment that started at the end of March and went all the way through April. It was so very, very odd to be waking up and knowing that I would be working in someone else's space for the time being, doing the job that they assigned me to do in the way they wanted me to do it. I've been out of the real workday loop for a decade now, literally, and it was strange to leave the rhythm that my life has had for so long in order to enter another rhythm. That said, I have forgotten how much I enjoyed temp work - you work at a different location for a period of time, long enough to feel comfortable but not so long that you're caught up in office politics. And I have learned sooooo many different softwares and seen them in all of their applications, all thanks to temp work over the years.

And then there was the Mythic Journeys movie on Saturday, May 2 at the historic Plaza Theater in downtown Atlanta that turned out to be a smashing success (you can view the trailer here at the Mythic Journeys website) but that also ate into evenings and weekends until the weekend of the showing itself.

That said, it's been a busy spring for this little knitter, and I wouldn't trade very much of it for a refund!

But down to blocking. The Saturday in January following Jackie's talk (I'm so enjoying saying "I did 'this' on Saturday!"), I decided that I would follow her instructions for blocking lace. Which entailed getting down on the clean floor with a good, big towel and some blocking pins. I wanted to make sure that the piece had all the rest of Saturday day, Saturday evening, and all of Sunday to dry properly. And it was later in the afternoon and I had spent some quality time stitching and listening to a book on tape, and I had had a late breakfast so why not block at 1:30 on a Saturday? I could always have lunch after I was done. Why give up all that drying time just for a little lunch, I ask you? After all, how long could this blocking project take??

OK, well, it took about 2 1/2 hours. Never mind that it was a rectangle, never mind that my gauge was the same throughout, never mind that there was no shaping. Nope, it all had to do with the stretching of the piece as wide and as long as it needed to go without realizing that it had a mind of its own.

This is the center of the piece. The name of the pattern is "Seven Swans" and it is from the book Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls by Martha Waterman and published by Interweave Press. It is a piece that I started at The Mountain 2 years ago with help from a Master Knitter (and a couple of glasses of wine!). You start in the center of the piece with a provisional cast-on, so that as you wear the shawl over your shoulders, the swans' wings are all descending. And part of the blocking challenge was to get the center line straight and the swans' wings lined up both side-to-side and with one another. And while you may not be able to see it, I added an extra garter stitch row when I picked up the stitches from the provisional cast-on so that I would not be picking up AND knitting in the lace pattern. What a nightmare that could turn into!

And here we have those pesky corners and that dratted edge that just won't stay straight. At least the swans' wings have finally decided to line up alongside one another! I think this was about 3:00 or so, and I was just so determined to get this piece done that I was going to ignore that rumbling noise in my tummy. Grrrr! Of course, with this piece as with all the myriad others I have blocked over the years, the corners just decide to have a mind of their own. The wings may stay straight up and down, but somehow, somewhere, is some extra give that the fabric finds and holds onto until you get onto the corners. It never fails. You have to pull the corners down as far as they will go without messing up the symmetry of the pattern, then pull the width between the corners again without messing up the symmetry of the pattern, then when you have pulled as much as you can from the edges, you then pull the corners UP so that the edges will give. Up. It's weird to type this technique out loud since it's one I discovered while blocking needlepoint and have never vocalized, but you have to account for the give in the corners by pulling the edges back up so that they are perpendicular to the lines of the design. You can especially see the need for pulling the corner up on the left-hand side of this picture - see how the colorway of the fabric on the edge looks like it bends to the left? It does, and you have to ease that portion back up so that it is at a 90 degree angle. The pattern has pulled all of the give out of its range, but you won't know that until you've spent a good half hour trying to urge the pattern down to the range of the corner. When the pattern stops giving, it's time to pull the corners and the edges back up.

And here we have the other side with the wonky bottom edge (remembering that there are two bottom edges to this piece):


But at least the center line is straight! I think by this time I had given up on the lack of sustenance and decided to eat. About 4:00 in the afternoon. The swans' wings were as opened as they could be, leaving edges that looked more like Crests of the Wave instead of edges. And of course, easing the edges back into alignment means that you run the risk of skewing the symmetry of the design elements. I thought perhaps that there was a rule that the portions of the lace pattern with more knitting on the edge would have the greatest give, but looking closely at this photo it seems that some portions pooch out more with knitting next to them, and others with an open lace stitch. There just seems to be no telling.

Finally, reinforced with sandwich and glass o' milk, I climbed up on the couch to get the overview shot of the almost-completely blocked to perfection shawl:


The centerline at the top of the shot is still off, and I adjusted the edges to a greater or lesser extent, but this was the first time I had taken a look to see what the overall effect was. Truly a stunning piece. It's nice and light and, while you can't see it from these photos, the yarn has a deep plum tone that stands out from the darker purple-black shades. It is light but warm, and I wore it with my friend Jane when we saw "Benjamin Button" in early February. A good weight for a movie sweater.

Here are some pre-blocked pictures (I think I used them before in this blog) that show the lovely color of the yarn:








So I'll say here again, blocking is a process. A very long, involved, down-on-your-knees process, especially with the fine-ness of lace process. And so (wearing my wisdom dispensing hat as I have for lo these many years), it is best to eat first, then block.