Perfectionism vs pragmatism

Another project I've just resurrected is a scarf I made last winter. Although it was nominally completed, I've never worn it because I couldn't quite get the finishing touches right. I thought I'd finished it once, then I tried to block it. Blocking, for non-knitters, is a technique often used for lace knitting. Unblocked lace can tend to look like an old dishrag, and blocking makes the lace pattern open up nicely so that it's more distinctive. To do it, you wet the finished knitting, stretch the bejesus out of it, pin it out on the floor while it's damp and then let it dry.  

What it will look  like if I ever get around to blocking it.
I did this by sticky taping the scarf to the table.
If only real blocking were that easy.

What blocking also does, sometimes, is make the thing about twice as long as you thought it would be. So it was with this scarf. Once I'd laboriously blocked it, it ended up more than three metres long. I unpinned it and ripped it back to a less stupid length, but I still didn't know what to do with the ends. Fringing, a different lace pattern? I tried two different types of fringing but the ends kept curling up and looking stupid, and I couldn't think of how to prevent this other than by adding beads to the fringe, which I knew would just clack about frantically every time I moved and irritate the hell out of me, so I chucked it in the knitting basket and ignored it for a year. 

Last night it got to me, so I just decided to fix it as best I could. With one eye on Paper Giants on the telly* and another on the scarf, I undid the fringing, ripped back the curling ends and cast them off again. Then I replaced the fringing. 

Fringed but as yet unblocked.

Neat edges! Ever since I learnt that you can neaten your edges
by slipping the first stitch of every row, that's what I've done.
It doesn't matter on edges that you won't see, such as in the seams of a garment,
but it's nice for edges that are on show. 

 

The scarf still not the way I wanted it to be, but I just can't get it to match the idealised but vague mental picture I've got of it. However, a scarf around the neck is worth several in the knitting basket, and I really like the the stitch pattern and the yarn (Filatura di Crosa Multicolour, a mohair with subtly morphing colours). 

 I might or might not get around to blocking it again, but in the meantime, I'm going to wear it just so I can tick another project off the list. Roll on, winter!



* I enjoyed Paper Giants, but were the 1970s really that groovy and daggily glamorous? Maybe they were if you worked at Cleo and got to photograph nude actors and write articles that would make religious conservatives rant themselves into non-existence. But if you were a brainy, bookish teenage girl growing up amid the beach culture of the Central Coast … not so much.