decided to see if this could be done by Christmas, spent two days rolling the yarn into a ball, now to knit the swatch!

Did the recommended needle size actually get gauge?? Never happens to me… Just to be sure tomorrow I’ll give some smaller needles a try just to be sure

Yep -- gauge with sz 3… After finally realizing I was supposed to swatch in stockinette… Oh well, got a lot of practice in on the lace pattern!

needless to say, not done by Christmas, so I made a little booklet of pictures and promised the scarf soon (prompting the comment that if spent less time on the booklets maybe I’d have more of a chance of having the knitting done…)

1/23/12 first half complete -- takes a while because this is not traveling knitting for me and has to be done at home in peace and quiet! The project is christening the beautiful yan bowl I got for Christmas (from the recipient of the scarf -- how apropos!)

1/25 -- NOTE TO SELF: when knitting a project that requires two identical halves, do not assume you will remember what cast on you used on the first half (rrgg -- two trials and two full cast ons later, it does appear that the cable cast on was the correct choice -- my new fav cast on, BTW)

3/11 knitting complete, just need a quiet sunny time for grafting -- I was confused for a bit about the grafting (if my wrong sides are together, the live yarns for each piece are not together…) until I realized you only really need ONE live yarn to graft (I guess the directions leave the long tail on both sides so you can choose which direction to you want to graft from…)

3/17 -- grafting wasn’t too bad -- BARELY had enough yarn, though, and I bumped it up some from what was recommended… after grafting there were some significant dimples at the graft line, they flattened nicely on the blocking board, we’ll hope when I take it off they will remain gone -- but whew! 200 little points to pin out! shouldn’t have started that at 11:00 pm…

final size (after blocking -- bottom photo) 13.5 wide x 67 inches long (on blocking board it was 15x69) -- lovely!