Jeanie - all done! (picture&text heavy)

Here she is, all done!

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The pictures show the dramatic change from the pre-blocking photos in my previous post. The pattern is emphasized and brought out with great clarity. Love it! I'm pleased the blocking worked so well, especially since I had no idea how effective it would be. It's a striking difference!

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And in case you are wondering - yes, those are reversible cables! They look exactly the same on both sides! Oh joy divine. :) Those of you who have knitted cables know how ugly they usually look on the wrong side. This concept of a cable that looked identical on both sides seemed a little like magic to me. (In fact, it's really just a little bit of 1x1 rib, so what looks like a C4B is actually a C8BR.) A shawl is the perfect project for a reversible cable, as it (unlike, for instance, a sweather) doesn't really have an inside that can be hidden from sight.

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I was a little bit terrified to start this project, but it turned out so much easier than I had feared! There were a whole bunch of things I've never done before, and some techniques I hadn't even heard of. Knitting from a chart was a little bit scary, not to mention doing three charts at the same time... Temporary cast on, cables on extra needles, reversible cables, drop stitches, cable cast-off, grafting, blocking, the list goes on. I can't imagine what I would have done without all the lovely people out there in the online knitting community, who have spent their time doing all sorts of great tutorials and posting them for us lesser beings to learn from. Thank you all!

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The charts looked complicated and I figured I'd be slaving over them during the entire knitting process. Much to my surprise I tossed the charts before I had even done two repeats! The logic and rythm of the pattern was as clear as day. And from there on it was a breeze. Even after 170cm of knitting I wasn't tired of it at all - I could probably have kept on knitting for another meter before getting bored. Had I known how much she would stretch I would have stopped knitting much earlier though. All good things must come to an end, and the cables running along the sides were (with a great deal of concentration) continued along the cast-off edge and the temporary cast-on edge and grafted together. And I have to say that dropping those 10 metres of stitches at the end was exciting, if a little terrifying. ;)

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To match this very long post, a little picture to give you an idea of how insanely long this shawl turned out to be:

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Could look nice with a long formal dress perhaps?

The humble beginning - The tricky cable cast-off - Nearly done - Jeanie shawl pattern