who cut the cheese?

I did! I cut the cheese....FINALLY. Ok, fart jokes aside, I've been knitting this scarf since September, but now it is done, done, DONE!



here's the deets:

free pattern: Swiss Cheese scarf from Knitting escapism
yarn: Patons Grace 4.5 balls (100% mercerized cotton) in "Night"
needles: 3.25mm bamboo straights (apparently I have no circs this size or I would have switched)



This has seriously been one of my looooooonger projects to date. Mostly because I kept putting it down out of boredom. There were times that I put it down and thought that I would never go back to it. I would force myself to bring it on trips. I think the bulk of it's knitting was done in the following airports: Ottawa, Laguardia, Detroit, San Diego, San Francisco and Philadelphia. And then a big chunk got knit on a drive along the Pacific Coast highway (fear not, I was checking out the scenery too...). Two weeks ago when a bunch of my smaller projects were coming to a close and I was itching to cast on for about fifty more, I gave myself a slap and said NO. No. new. projects. until. the. cheesy. one. is. done.

And the results you now see before you.



And really, I could not be happier. I know I'm going to get a lot of wear out of it. For once the drudgery of knitting with black yarn was worth every agonizing stitch. And my yarn choice? Well as I used to say in grade six, it pretty much sucked the grande banane... Mercerized cotton slipped and slid all over my needles, and the drape of it just wasn't right. Some of you may remember the issues I was having in the beginning with a loosey-goosey stitch that kept forming at the edge of every hole (you can read about that here and here and what I did to fix it is on my ravelry projects page, so I will spare you more of that other than to say THANK-YOU ALL for your advice on it...) And in the end, the scarf looked a lot better than when I began, tho definitely still a looser weave. Not a yarn I'd recommend for this project at all (but I was stash busting from another frogged project and was hell-bent on using it). And the "holes" do look a bit better than before:



I also forced myself to knit to the 60 inch mark...no mean feat on a scarf this wide I might add. I kept measuring it and cursing myself, but I knew I'd be happier in the long run if I didn't cut any corners. I got to about the 55 inch mark and thought "I'll block out the rest". Then I had the BF measure it and he only came up with 50 inches. I wanted to kill him. I felt like I was knitting backwards. But I perservered, and after a good blocking it was a whopping SEVENTY-THREE inches.

A beast!



The other suck-tacular thing about this yarn? It's a total lint magnet. Now I'm definitely used to being covered in fur and fuzz as a general rule, and it definitely doesn't help that when trying to take pictures of knitting projects I'm usually also contending with some uber-annoying antics:



Anyone else have those "he's-so-adorable-yet-I-still-want-to-ring-his-neck" moments?

But at the very least you can tell I'm excited about a project when I post a million pictures of it. Two more? oh ok,



SO, complaining about the yarn aside --it's done and I love it. Temperatures have been unseasonably cool here lately too so I've actually been able to get some wear out of it. No doubt that is all about to change though --we're not really one of those climates where you can wear scarves all summer (even cotton scarves...)

And completion of this beast means one thing: new projects on the horizon!
woot.