crossing the line

that is, the FINISH line!! YAY!, the wooster shawl is Done. do you want to see? of course you do!
let me first show the progress from friday and saturday:

this is it on the morning of day 6 (friday):

and on day 7:

you can see i really buckled down and got a lot done. i worked through all my medium gray yarn and started the outer band of the darkest color. i briefly wondered if i should have made the center square larger (since i had more light gray yarn) and contemplated (still MORE briefly) going back and adding onto it. ok, i was getting a little nervous that i would run out of yarn. yeah, i know i spun 2,000 yards, but i still got nervous. it looks so small before you block it; i was worried it would never stretch to the right size.

and rightly so! i DID run out of yarn, or at least i did feel justified in using every last bit, and then knitting a two-row edge of the lightest gray as a finish.

it looked like this when i bound it off the needles, morning of day 8:

it was all of 48 inches square, maybe; SO not big enough! and SO ugly. then i soaked it for a couple of hours and spent a couple of hours pinning it out to dry:

it stretched to 60 inches then, with a diagonal of about 78 inches. perfect. then, today, the morning of day 9, i took out all the pins. it relaxed back about one-half inch on each side (not bad at all). you might be able to see the pin marks in this photo:

here is a detail of the stitches unstretched, and then stretched:

quite a difference; unstretched the patterns have more depth and texture, but stretched, you get the full effect of the openwork and sheerness.

and finally, the full piece:

there really isn’t anything else to say abut it; i think it speaks for itself.

tomorrow, updates on other lacepacers team members, and more olympic athlete spotlight!