It's complicated: the story of Damask

Our weekend away was just delightful. I got to visit with family that I hadn't seen in years, and meet some new-to-me cousins, as well as introduce my girls to that branch of the family. In addition, the travel time gave me a chance to work on Morgan's sweater... and to finish my lacy scarf, Damask.

This is the most complex, intricate piece of knitting I've tackled to date. Nine charts, ten pages of written instructions, and one ball of lace-weight (which took me an hour to wind from a hank into a centre-pull ball). The yarn made a great souvenir from our trip to DC, and a reasonably-priced one at that! Only 13$, and then another 5$ for the pattern.

My notes:

June 2nd: I’m a little nervous about running out of yarn, so I redid the 297-stitch cast-on 3 times. Even using bamboo needles, my fingers were very sore!

November 8th: After casting on and knitting the first four rows, I put this project down in favour of a lot of baby things, and now that my baby’s here, I’ve resumed work on the shawl. I’d really like to have it done by Christmas, especially since winter white will go perfectly with my red coat!

November 14th: It took me ages to figure out why I originally thought the total number of rows was 126, then 158, and actually 142. Different sizes. As it turns out, it’s wise to read the pattern all the way through. Anyway, since I picked the shawl up last week, I’ve done 22 rows. At this rate, it’ll take me another 40 days to finish. I can live with that. I do enjoy that the rows are ever decreasing, so it may not even take me that long, if I can just stick to doing a few rows a day.

January 13th: Only 28 rows to go- I’m tantalizingly close to the end!

January 16th: I finished knitting it on a road trip this weekend (on Saturday, to be precise), blocked it last night and wove in the ends today. I love it. And I still have a few meters of yarn to spare.