everybody likes pie

I have this sort of love/hate relationship with knitting.  When things are finished and they're pretty, I love it.  When there are 12,000 ends to weave in before that happens, I hate it.  When it helps me relax while I'm watching a movie or reading, I love it.  When it's seaming reverse stockinette in dark purple, it makes me want to stab my eyeballs.

Enter lace, which at various times encompasses most of what I both love and hate about the hand crafts.

I started this shawl (the Pie Shawl from Weekend Knitting) in January of 2007 to take with me on my various plane trips back and forth between Michigan and Massachusetts (so long ago I don't remember what the yarn is or where I got it or anything.  Of course I didn't write it down, why do you ask?).  If you know me and you're thinking to yourself that it's ridiculous for me to make a shawl because I would never ever wear one, you're not wrong.  But if memory serves it was an easy enough pattern that it didn't make me want to pull out my hair (unlike this one).  Anyway, I finished knitting it fairly quickly, completely shut out the fact that it would require weaving ends into LACE (aka disguising ends of yarn in holes), and looked at the pattern to read about the edging, for which I had really pretty ribbon.


It called for a crocheted edging (and this is where reading ahead would have been beneficial).  Here's what I know about crocheting:                (big empty void of nothingness)


So it went into a bag and sat there for almost three years.


This summer I pulled it out and was feeling particularly ambitious (or more likely I was putting off doing something else unpleasant) so I tackled said edging.  It's not pretty, it's probably not actually even real crochet, except that I used a crochet hook and it's not coming off.  So I'll take it.

Luckily the ribbon more or less conceals the fact that I had no idea what I was doing.

When it was all finished and the ends were woven (weaved?) in, I set it down to photograph it, and it looked like this:

I'm Batman!

Yep, basically a giant Rorschach test.  Really attractive.  But then, through the magic of about 200 pins, a big cardboard blocking board and copious amounts of water, now it looks like this:

A pie shawl that actually looks like a pie!  It's a miracle!

Natural light, how I love you

Notice how it lays pretty flat now?  Not bad, eh?

I still have no idea what I'm going to do with it.  At least it's finished and it's pretty and it's inspired me to do more lace, which is nice because I was ready to give up the whole endeavor completely (not really).