FO Friday: Estonian Lace and Furlough Day 4

I’m lacking just two or three rounds of being finished with the baby blanket I blogged about on Wednesday, and if I waited to post an FO Friday entry until late this evening, I could add it to today’s accomplishment. But there’s no guarantee I’ll have anything for next Friday if I do that, so you’re stuck. Or I’m stuck, I should say.

Despair not, however, because I got up early this morning to block my Estonian lace scarf.

I finished the knitting on it two weeks ago, and it had been sitting in a crumpled pile on my sewing table ever since. Wait. Didn’t I say that last week about the Button Back Shrug? Yes. I did. I’m detecting a pattern here. Um. Pressing on… last night before I went to bed, I tossed the scarf into a sink full of water in the upstairs bath and let it soak overnight. This morning, I was wide awake before 6, so I dragged myself out of bed, made coffee, let the dogs out, and trudged upstairs to squeeze the water out of the scarf and towel dry it.

Back downstairs for coffee and then upstairs again into the guest bedroom — which is the only room in the house the pets are kept from — to lay out my blocking squares. It took maybe 20 minutes to carefully insert the blocking wires, another 10 or 15 minutes to pin out, and then back downstairs to eat breakfast and watch the last three episodes of Doctor Who Season 6 on Netflix. (Yes, I’ve seen them before, but I’m prepping for the 50th Anniversary Episode to be aired on November 23rd. I’ll start Season 7 again, either this evening or tomorrow. Or maybe this afternoon if I finish up Doctor Sleep.)

Spouse and I took the doggies for a walk around noonish. (Aren’t you loving all the minutiae of my day? This is what happens when Congress refuses to fund my job. I obsess over the details of my daily existence instead of the details of DOING MY JOB!) By the time we came home, the scarf was dry, thanks in large part to the ceiling fan in the guest bedroom. After unpinning, we were ready for our photoshoot.

Pattern: Lily of the Valley Scarf, from Knitted Lace of Estonia by Nancy Bush
Yarn: Classic Elite Mountain Top Vail, colorway #6403 Steel, 2 skeins
Needle: Size 3 Hiya Hiya circular
Mods: None, really, except for the extra pattern repeats. I knitted until the yarn was nearly gone, using approx 450 yards.
Finished size: Approx 10″ by 57″
Satisfaction with finished product: I love it. It’s light and airy, but the alpaca in the yarn makes it warm and cozy at the same time. It’s long enough that I can wrap it around my head and neck to keep my ears warm — always a concern when winter’s in full force, because a cold wind gives me excruciatingly painful earaches. It’s dressy enough with that gorgeous lace pattern to wear simply as decoration for an evening out. In short, the best scarf ever. Well, except for my Bigger on the Inside shawlette.

You can see more pics — well, actually, several variations of the same pic — on my Ravelry project page, but only if you’re a Ravelry member. Oh, and in case you didn’t know this, you can click on the pics in this post to make them bigger. AND you can see more FOs by clicking that badge over there. Do it! You know you want to.

And now I get to cast on for something new! What to choose, what to choose…