I did it!*

I finished the Haruni shawl for my little brother’s wedding! With time to spare, actually.

My Blue Haruni (rav it!)
Pattern: Haruni, by Emily Ross
Yarn: Ella Rae Lace Merino, 1 skein, 460 yds. I think the colorway had a number, but it was a soft cobalt color Royal Blue, #10!
Needle: US 4
Started: um, I forget
Finished: April 11 with the knitting, April 25 with the blocking
For: me! To wear! In my little brother’s wedding!

Unfortunately, at this point there is scant evidence that I did wear it at the wedding. I found one picture of me in it, kind of in the background. But in most of the pictures I wasn’t wearing it, since I didn’t want to look that different from the other bridesmaids, you know? So you’ll have to take my word for it–it looked faboo with my dress.

Anyway, deets. I shall sum it up poetically: To knit, a dream. To block, a nightmare.

First, the knitting.

LOVE love loved this pattern. It was really well written, and pretty easy to follow. Until that last chart, the lovely edging, which was confusing as all get out. I found myself actually using the written instructions for that part, something I never ever do. But, all was okay. The pattern is pretty intuitive, once you get going on it. Emily put scads and scads of pattern notes on there, which were kind of chatty but in a nice friendly way. And they were helpful. I think the most helpful of all was this line–“Please note that due to the rapid rate of increase in Chart B [that’s the edging part] it will consume roughly half your entire yardage.”

Holy crapola am I glad she put that in there. I was toying with the idea of making the shawl a bit bigger, but I slapped the remaining yarn on my scale after I was done with the main shawl part and whaddya know–I had 46 g left of what I thought was a 100 g skein. (It actually turned out to be only 95 g. Boo! Hiss! Well, not a big deal really, it worked out fine in the end.)
So off to the edging I went.

The edge does increase quite quickly, and gives the shawl a distinctive crescent shape, which was purdy but a pain in the arse-bucket to block. I had 6 g of yarn left after I finished that part.

Then there was the crochet bindoff thing. You work it by knitting 3tog with a crochet hook (please don’t bind me by semantics–it worked, okay?), then chaining 6 and doing a k3tog again. It took awhile, and a lot of yarn (3 g!) but I think it was worf it.

So, to recap yarn usage:
49 g for main part of shawl
40 g for edging
3 g for bindoff
=
92 g total.

IF we can believe the yarn label and 100 g really is 460 yards, then it’s 4.6 yards per gram and I used 423.2 yards total. (I did not swatch. Dear knitting gods, please do not smite me.)

And so to block.

I had to redo this three effing times. Gaa, it just didn’t look right. First I tried blocking it out as a triangle, since that was the easiest with my blocking wires. Bleh. It just looked wrong. The ends were stretched out all weird. Then I made it into a crescent shape, but I made it too deep and it looked all narrow and gimpy. So then I pulled it out width-wise and monkeyed with it awhile, and then it was just right. Yay! Stupid thing. The tip was especially a PITA.

But *I* like it, even though the blub said it looks like a giant lacy Star Trek emblem (but pretty). And you can wear it so many different ways!

The Traditional!

The Lobster Bib! (It’s still a bit deep in front.)

The Sexy Babushka!

The Coy Peeky Through the Thing, um, way

And the blub’s favorite….To Infinity! And Beyond!

Yeah. All that being said, I don’t think I’m going to get much wear out of it. And speaking of not wearing things again, anyone interested in a slightly used David’s Bridal dress in Marine Blue, size 6? I dig the cut, but I don’t see that one coming off the hanger again anytime soon.

*”I did it!” is my niece Hanna’s latest catch phrase. As in, “Did you go to school today, Hanna?” “I did! I did it!”