It's blocking!

6 rows of garter stitch...defeated!

Lookee at what I did.


(The knitting isn't blurry, just the picture. Sorry 'bout that. If it were ever bright enough in VT that I didn't need flash, I think it would all go better. But anyway)

I'm not a humble knitter. I don't brag, I don't run around saying "Look what I did!" (or at least, I don't once the newness wears off my latest FO), or when other people say "I couldn't do that," I don't look down my nose and think "Well, she's probably right." But when people compliment me, I also don't shucks my head down and mutter "tweren't nothin." I think I'm pretty damn good at this sticks-and-string thing, and but I also figure that just about anyone who is willing to sit down and give it a go, make some mistakes, and keep trying, can do anything that Elizabeth Zimmerman or Alice Starmore can do.

But I'm completely in awe of myself. Beaded socks, sure, but this? I can knit this? I had no idea!

This is my favorite part:


I love the way the pineconey shapes grow into the diamondy shapes, which then turn into the rose trellis lace that hated me so much. I just think it's so elegant. I adore it, completely.

For those playing catch up at home, this is Mom's Christmas present. This will actually mark the first time I've ever finished any knitted present for my mommy, ever. I've been a bad daughter. but the way she went crazy over this pattern, I think I'll be forgiven.

The pattern is Shetland Garden Faroese Shawl by Sivia Harding and the yarn was from...A Twist of Wool? One of the vendors at the Vermont Sheep and Wool festival a couple of months ago. I adore the yarn as much as I adore the pattern, actually. It's a two-ply yarn, just the heavy side of fingering, I'd say. My camera keeps making the pictures purple, but the yarn is actually this deep blue, and if you look closely, it has rainbow flecks all though it. It's perfect for my mom, who seems such a simple woman on the surface, but as she pushes closer to 60, is discovering more and more what a complex, complicated, and wonderful woman she is allowed to be.

She picked the pattern, although she doesn't know it; she saw it in one of my binders, and actually cried out. "Look," she said, "it looks like butterflies!" And she immediately backpedaled -- "At least, it does to me," she said, and she almost looked ashamed for thinking of it. For imagining a pattern in the knitting.

So I had to make her the shawl. Because she looked at a picture of knotted string, and saw butterflies.

At last, something went right today.