Finito! (almost)

Well it's finally done. I've never been so happy to bind off a project in my life. I hope that's not a sign of what's to come with my future lace endeavors - I really want to like this. Here's the finished product (pre-blocking):

Not a great picture I know - still working on getting a good camera (among other things). Maybe if I stopped spending money on yarn, that would become a reality. But we all know that's not gonna happen. The yarn was reclaimed from a very soft sweater I hated to give away (that's a whole other story). The neck and arms were constructed from the khaki color you see and the body was black. I ran out of the black yarn at the end (imagine that) so I decided to make a "border" of khaki starting halfway through the leaf patter at the bottom of the shawl. I like the effect.

So anyway, I hated the picot bind off specified in the pattern - it ended up looking like baby dread locks so I ripped it out (yet again - see why I hated working on this?) and made my own version of the picot bind off:

Mucho better! Here's what I did:

*Using the "knitting on" method cast on 2 stitches, knit 2 stitches, pass the first
knitted stitch over and of the right needle, continue to knit one stitch and
pass one stitch over until you have bound off 6 stitches. * Repeat from * to * until
completely bound off.

This one was worked over a multiple of 4 stitches obviously but it can be modified however you want by simply casting off more than 6 stitches. Viola! No more baby dreads. They were hideous.

So now I'm happy and can move on to all the other projects that have backed up in the making of this thing. Perhaps I should take this whole escapade as a hint that better project planning is in order? Post-blocking pictures coming soon to a blog near you.