The last few rows and blocking!

I sat down on Tuesday night, determined to finish Clapotis. I was worried that I hadn't left enough yarn for the decrease section, but as I knit on and the size of the ball barely seemed to change as the tip of disappeared, it turned out not to be a problem.



The worst part of finishing was that as the rows got shorter, I had to stop and drop down the stitches more frequently. As much as I enjoyed the flush of success when I reached the next dropped column, actually undoing the columns was kind of a pain. My yarn (a wool and silk blend) definitely had a halo, and was sticky. Instead of the dropped row being like undoing a zipper, it took a good five minutes to untangle the stitches and pull them all loose. Perhaps a cotton/silk blend would have been more slippery? Or bamboo? In any case, it's a good lesson if I ever do another pattern with dropped columns of stitches.

Here's the last column, waiting to be dropped:



Since I purled the drop rows, it just looks like an extra wide column.

After I finished dropping stitches, I took a before shot for the blocking.



It's always such an amazing transformation. Here's clapotis all laid out and wet after a quick trip under the tub faucet, after I pressed out the water, and blocked it as a rectangle.



I lost a little bit of blue dye, but the yarn took the water well and blocked extremely quickly: no pins, about 4 minutes. And now, it's just been sitting for two days on my garbage bag "blocking pad" waiting to dry. It's holding the shape perfectly as it dries -- I love wool. What a difference! :-) The pattern really wasn't looking so great to me while knitting as the scarf just got longer and longer. Kind of old cat lady. But after blocking it just looks crisp and lovely and shows off the yarn. I couldn't ask for more.

The colors are particularly great when the yarn is wet and the blues look more saturated.



How pretty!!

It's now dry, and after I weave four ends in, will be done! Even better, tomorrow is Saturday, so there's a slim chance that I will actually manage a daylit shot for a project summary post. Given the early, December sunsets and the low, Seattle clouds, daylight isn't exactly overabundant recently -- maybe the weather will cooperate?