Saturday, November 26, 2005

Completion

There is a certain satisfaction that comes with completing a project. I am very very good at beginning projects. Less good at finishing them. So rare is that completion satisfaction for me.

Knitting has given me some more opportunities for completion satisfaction. But I DO have several projects still on the needles. Most of them are far from completion. One has just ONE MORE THING to do.... before I felt it.

Most of them are just a matter of sitting down and getting them done.

Such was the case for The Clapotis.

I started it back in September (I think) when it was the Knit Along for the month at Knitique. I was highly skeptical of my ability to tackle this project. The pattern looked very complicated. I was also hesitant to spend $20/skein on silk. Knowing I needed 5 skeins, especially. I contemplated other fiber choices but kept returning to two shades of Art Yarns silk. I decided that spending that kind of money on this project would help drive me to actually start AND finish it.

I copied the pattern into a Word doc for myself and broke it down so I could keep track of the rows and made it easy for me to read it (increased the font size considerably!). There are yahoo! groups with Excel spreadsheets to track the rows, but they didn't work for me. My funny little system of X's and highlighting did the trick.

Then I got a wild hair that I would wear this as a wrap to a party we go to every year. It is a formal affair. I have myriad black dresses and always have the urge to find something with color for a change. Well, this would be my color. This would be my new dress...so to speak. I would just take one of the black dresses and add a colorful silk wrap.

After much internal debate I chose a purple color.... It matches my tanzanite ring, actually. I still really really like the steely blue color. I may have to use that for something else....

After a couple of late nights, I finished it. The first late night was courtesy of a significant nap Thanksgiving afternoon. I just wasn't tired so I kept knitting. The second one was due to the fact that I could see the end. Just. A. Few. More. Rows.

And now, it is done. I used it as a scarf today. Cold has come to the valley today. It was warm on Thursday, rainy on Friday and today the cold wind blew. But my silk scarf kept me nice and toasty. I think I need to take my leftover silk (I only used 3.75 skeins) and make some gloves to keep my hands warm too!

Anyway.... Here it is.

Overall.....
And for detail:


It isn't nearly as difficult as it looks. Looking at either the pattern or the completed project. Just keep track of what row you are on and you'll be fine.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very Very Beautiful. It will look beautiful as your "new dress" and Tanzanite will be great with it.

D

livingwilde said...

Wow. It's BEAUTIFUL

Martha in CA said...

So now that The Clap is done, do you need an antibiotic? LOL!!

Crack. Me. Up.