Whew

I think I can rest assured that even if my sister reads this blog, she won't be reading it three days before her wedding. So I'm going to go ahead and post of this week's great knitting coup.

I made the Great American Aran Afghan as her wedding gift, and I had an additional deadline of trying to get it done for the Ohio State Fair competition. Well, the deadline was Tuesday at 7 pm, and I am proud to announce that I got the afghan done in time to drop it off a full hour before the deadline. :-)

I had all the squares knitted and started seaming Sunday morning at Stitchin' Spa Day, but was only about halfway through the cabled border. I ended up taking Monday and half of Tuesday off work and basically knitting virtually nonstop from 9:30 am Monday to 3:30 am Tuesday, but I got it done. Hooray! Now I just have to wait and see how the judging goes.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a great photo of it, but this shows things as well as I could, snapping a photo from atop my sofa:


This was actually, despite the stress at the end, a very very fun project, and I learned a ton. I can finally feel confident about cabling without a cable needle too. Bobbles? Well, I started the project loving them, but by the end I was ready to throw the yarn across the room. And I'm really really ready to start a mindless project now, preferably in a color other than ecru.

I did some math, and figured out that this is probably around 130,000 stitches. I started on the plane during my trip to Kripalu in February, and I knitted fairly steadily on it during that time, though I had other simultaneous projects going on too. A lot of work, but I'm very pleased at how it came out.

Now, the hard part: waiting to find out the results at the fair. And trying to figure out what to wrap up for my sister and her hubby--they know they aren't getting the gift this weekend, but I need a way to let them know what it is. Several people have suggested swatches, but my wrists are killing me right now, so I'm not so sure about the feasibility of that.