In the last post, I was all over the place with my knitting.  Worked a little on this, a little on that, got distracted with something else, and on and on and on.  Then Paul gave me a kick in the pants and said, “Just pick one and finish it!”  Hmmmmmm.  Interesting thought. So, I did.

I finished my Duane Park Triangle:

AND then I finished my Outbound Mittens:

Both not blocked.  When I block the shawl, I will post more pics because you really can’t see the lacey bits very well right now.   And also, remember the fussy applied edging I was telling you about?  (Which did take me about 10 years, as I thought it might.)  Here’s a little explanation:

The stitches to the right of the orange marker are the edging stitches.  The count varies but it’s an average of about 10 stitches per row, in an 8 row repeat pattern.  The stitches to the left of the orange marker are the remaining 32 body stitches to bind off (I started with 179 stitches).  So, when knitting an applied edging, you end up “binding off” one stitch every other row by knitting two together (the last edging stitch in the row with one of the body stitches.  Let’s do some math.  There are eight rows in the edging pattern repeat. That means there are 4 stitches bound off for each pattern repeat (1 every other row).  Which means I have to do the edging pattern 8 more times to bind off the remaining 32 body stitches. That’s 64 edging pattern rows, with an average of 10 stitches in each row.  Which means I needed to knit approximately 640 more stitches to bind of 32 stitches.  Then do the math with the 179 stitches I started with.

See why I dread that type of edging a little?  You kind of feel like you are at the binding off point, but not really. And you kind of feel you should only be working 179 stitches, but not really because you have to add an edging.  It messes with the whole knitting psychology of nearing the end (but not really) of a pattern.  But, it’s VERY pretty! Stay tuned for the those after-blocking pictures.

And I’m ignoring the in-my-face-right-where-everyone-no one-will-see-it wrong stitch:

Also, today is Halloween.  I think I’ve said before I’m not a big fan of Halloween.  When I was younger I always had trouble figuring out what to dress up as, and just in general I don’t love all the spooky, scary things I guess.  Wow, I sound like a wimp.  But I have been enjoying seeing Miss Ladybug (aka Cinderella) and Mr. Doodlebug (aka Thomas the Tank Engine) get excited about it.   They are at the age where it remains to be seen if they will put on their costumes and/or wear the things they are supposed to wear on their heads (a crown and an engineer’s hat).

And in the spirit of Halloween, I rallied and made them a sticky spider web to throw things at:

….. which ended up being too high and no matter how hard they threw the tissue paper blobs, they couldn’t reach it.  And the method to move said spider web almost failed, but they still had a great time:

It was an especially great thing to do on a rainy day!  There was so much jumping-up-and-down excitement for about 45 minutes that they tired themselves right out.

Then we painted with q-tips:

And on a nicer day we went for a pretty fall walk to the park:

Now I’m off to prepare for two classes I’m teaching tomorrow and to organize my holiday knitting list.  Can you imagine the blog fodder those two things alone will produce???