This is my first project like this. It seems like it will take forever…and it might, but that’s okay. I’m proud of myself for doing it! It’s one more “difficult” knitting thing conquered. It also helps me understand how this type of thing is designed, and it will help me understand similar patterns that I find. My first sweater is next. It may seem easy and quick compared to this!

9/30/2010
I’m finished with the main body! Now to pick up 480 stitches…hmm…maybe it’s too early to start celebrating. Seriously, though, It’s turning out great so far.

10/2/2010
I finished the inner border and started the edging. I did the math today…I’m roughly 35,000 stitches into a roughly 60,000 stitch project. Hmm, maybe there’s a reason people don’t usually figure this out…

10/9/2010
On 10/6, disaster struck! The yarn broke in two different rounds of the inner border! It was in the same place, but I have to admit, I had noticed before the yarn looked a little thin on one of those rows, but I thought it would be okay. I wonder if that caused the second row to break, too, somehow. Lesson learned.

Anyway, I noticed it when the outer border was about to have to connect to that section. I don’t know how long it had been that way. I did some “stole surgery,” and I think it’s okay now. The other option was to take out all of the edging (I’d done about 25%, I think) and most of the inner border to fix it. I would have just taken out the entire border, because it would have been faster than trying to save what wasn’t damaged. This would have undone about a week’s progress and, of course, taken another week to get it back. My fix isn’t perfect by any means, but I don’t think it will be noticeable. Here’s hoping! I have almost half of the edging done now.

10/14/2010
So, yesterday, I ran out of yarn from my first ball. Not that this project took the entire ball. This is my second project with it. But the point is, I had to join the second ball and somehow make the colors match up correctly. I think this is a good thing, though. I may actually have a shot at the colors being somewhat similar where I graft the edging together at the end. We’ll see when we get there, I guess…

10/18/2010
I can’t believe it’s finished! I finished the knitting on the 16th, and I just got a chance to block it today. It took me less than two months! I managed that because the pattern actually kept me interested, even with 34 repeats of the chart for the body and 84 of the chart for the edging! The charts were short enough to memorize but long enough to keep me from getting bored.

Because of the color runs in the yarn, I realized it wouldn’t make much sense to try to do it in two halves and graft it in the center, because there would probably be an obvious color jump where the halves met. I still ended up with a bit of a jump. The yarn had been joined in the middle of the ball, and when I realized what had happened, I tried to go back and fix it, but it wasn’t perfect. I decided to fight my OCD tendencies and told myself no one else would think anything about it. For the most part, I think I was right. When I had to join yarn in the edging, though, I did a much better job matching it up, and I can’t tell where I did it. You can easily tell where I grafted the ends of the edging, though.

This will not be the last of this type of project for me. I’m elated to see how this turned out! Pictures soon, I promise.

10/22/2010
I reblocked this today, and it’s much bigger this time and looks much better. Definitely worth the extra effort!