Done stripin'

I finished the main part of the stripy Mably. I actually finished and photographed it a couple of weeks ago. I have been putting off doing the finishing because it involves lots of picking up stitches, knitting a few rows, casting off and sewing down. I like picking up stitches, but the thought of the rest of it bores me: it seems such a pedestrian way of tackling it. I think Brandon Mably isn't interested in all the things you can do with knitting, that he just sees it as a way of producing swathes of coloured fabric. There's very little shaping or styling in his patterns, and seldom much attempt to fit different sizes. (I still want to knit Shark though. And quite a few others. His colour sense more than makes up for any shortcomings I may be imagining.)

I mentioned this to my knitting-genius friend, and she said, why don't you do i-cord round the edges? Brilliant. First of all, I'm going to get it on the ironing boars and give it some steam: once I've done that I'll sew up the sides and see what it looks like on, and then I'll commence the i-cordathon. I'll need to find a fairly absorbing series of dvds for that, I think, but not with subtitles. Oh, and I did get bored with the stripes in the end. Note to self: next time you want to do a cuff-to-cuff cardi, choose a yarn that requires at least 5mm needles.

I've finished Scarf, page 80. It took me three goes to do the second end, which is executed as a border, because I was too stubborn / idle to look up how it should be done, which serves me right. But it needs to be blocked and I can't find a flat surface right now, so it will have to wait a little.