You'll be shocked

Alert the media, there's a finished object chez Wollgut! It's that lace scarf for my doctoral thesis advisor that I started one week B.C. (Before Conrad, that is), which was halfway done the night we rushed to the hospital, and that took three months to complete. Sheesh.

Good things come to those who wait, and while my advisor didn't know she was waiting for anything, this scarf turned out mighty nice, if I may say so myself.

I got the yarn--delicious Madelinetosh Pashmina (merino! silk! cashmere!)--the week after I defended, mulled over lace scarf patterns for weeks, then asked you for input, then ignored your advice, and finally settled on a narrower, longer version of Nancy Bush's Lilac Leaf Shawl. Verdict: one of my finest projects.

Want to have a closer look?

Closer?

Yes, those are nupps. And ya know what? They weren't half as bad. Although I admit that I abandoned Bush's technique of making seven stitches out of one knit stitch on a RS row, then purling those seven together on the next WS row. Instead I followed my mom's advice: make seven, slip those seven back onto the left needle, then knit seven together on the same RS row. Much easier, me thinks. And the result looks the same: I checked.

Waaaaayyyy more nerve-racking than making innocent little nupps was grafting the two parts together (lower edge and body + upper edge, so that the top edge mirrors the bottom). Kitchener stitch in itself isn't evil, but bloody hell, once I lose track of where I am (part 1, 2, 3, or 4 of the operation) I just can't figure out how to continue. You'd think it's easy to see if I most recently worked a stitch purl- or knitwise, but instead I experience complete brain shutdown, and then I make a mistake. This time I screwed up five or six stitches before I was done. I kept on Kitchening as best as I could. The two parts are joined successfully, but the mistake is visible to the knitter's eye (but only if that knitter's eye is mean-spirited and closely searches for mistakes). My advisor isn't a knitter, so I just won't worry about it.

And as always when I block a lace project, this time, too, I cursed the lack of blocking wires. I really ought to have blocking wires, 'cuz this isn't pretty:

I used about 5.000 blocking needles, and with a crying baby tied to my chest, it took about two hours to block the scarf ("5.000" may be an exaggeration, "two hours" is not). By the time I was done, the scarf was dry, more or less.

As I said, the scarf is longer and narrower than the original pattern: if I remember correctly, it's two repeats longer and two (three?) repeats narrower. I didn't measure the blocked scarf, but it's fairly long and fairly wide, kinda perfect, actually. The whole scarf is kinda perfect. I hope my advisor likes it!