Erm, Merry Christmas. Of 2006.

This is it, this is the Christmas present I promised a friend. Last year. She knew that I wouldn't be starting it until after the new year, but I don't think she expected it to take quite this long! Of course, by the time it was April and I wasn't even half done, I didn't feel much sense of urgency to keep working on it over the next few months, because, you know, who needs a scarf in the summer?

I had trouble working with the yarn, because the plies don't really like one another all that much. I've forgotten exactly what kind of yarn it is; I know it's a cotton/rayon blend, and I picked it because it was the closest thing to the color she wanted that I could find. It was hard to tell on the skein that the rayon plies never wanted to stay with their cotton plies like good little pieces of yarn. Which meant that I had to closely watch every single stitch I made, and I couldn't get away with knitting by feel.

It's also a bit tricky to knit this pattern on the train. Not because the pattern is all that tricky in itself; it's as easy as being able to knit, purl, and count to three. (By the way, the pattern is Wavy from Knitty.com.) I really admire the cleverness of the design, which is nothing more complicated than an offset rib stitch. What makes it a bit difficult in execution is the fact that you have to keep track of every single row.

The notes about the designer indicated that she resented having to use a row counter for it, which (of course) I took as a challenge to see if I could come up with a way to knit it without a row counter. (I don't own a row counter, so that probably made a difference.) I ended up typing the directions into a spreadsheet; the first column has a row for each row of the pattern, and then there's a column for each repeat of the pattern. Knit the first row, put a check mark in the row one, repeat one box. Knit the second row, put a check mark in that box. And so on. Easy peasy, although apparently not everyone automatically thinks like this, because my knitting group expressed some amazement at the concept. Well, I'm always happy to help a fellow knitter!

I put the before and after pictures up here to show how much of a difference blocking can make; for this pattern, at least, I find it sort of amazing. I may still be more used to the world of crochet, where you can maybe square up your work a bit if you wash it and dry it flat, but here it does wonders for the finished product. I'm actually rather proud to have my "From the knitting needles of..." label sewn on this one!

And when I finally gave it to my friend the other night, she loved it. The color, the pattern, the length, the weight, pretty much everything about it is apparently just what she wanted. You generally know as you're hand-making a gift that the recipient will like it, but it's still so gratifying to hear how much they love it.

So Merry Christmas, C, and stay warm this winter!