Color Affection is becoming the bane of my existence. Don’t get me wrong, this is going to be a shawl I will love once it is done. But I’ve been plotting ever more interesting ways to destroy it for the past few weeks. I was even a teeny bit joyful when Will the cat tried to make a bed out of it earlier today.
Here’s where I am.
I’m finally on the border. At least while I was doing those three-color stripes I had the fleeting second of “interesting” when I did the short row turning bit on every row.
“Oh, look! The short row sections are getting longer!”
Now I’m just knitting the red border, in boring red garter stitch. It’s a very pretty red. But I currently have 528 stitches on the needles, and a couple of repeats of the four row pattern to go. And every repeat adds another 10 stitches to that total. I thought seriously about stopping and just binding off now, but this is going to be huge, and that puny one inch border stripe will look stupid.
I just checked. As of right now, there are 12,600 Color Affections listed on Ravelry. Only 9345 of those have been finished. The rest are “in progress” (a euphemism for “I’m bored out of my mind here”), “hibernating” (a euphemism for “I hate this but can’t bring myself to frog it”), or “frogged”. Those last brave souls were at least honest in their boredom.
I have a couple other three-color combos in my stash that would make nice Color Affections. If any of you see any hint that I am rummaging through the yarn boxes to put together another one, please come over here and give me a nice head slap.
I’m thinking a TV marathon. Anybody have any good suggestions for mindless TV shows? If so, let me know.
And no, I haven’t forgotten that after I knit another eleventy billion stitches, I’ll have to bind the whole thing off.
Please send whisky.
* In case you are wondering about France, and don’t follow me on Facebook, we had a terrific time. John is blogging it so I’ll let him do that. Here is his first post.
argh….I have my yarn choices in cakes…..at am working on two Stephen West pieces at the moment but I was going to add this as mind numbing knitting….I may hold off
But, I love your color choices!
I started it, ran into edge troubles, frogged it, and have not been remotivated. And mine doesn’t even show up on the Rav counts.
Yes, you will love it. And your color choice remains outstanding.
My daughter has knitted one Color Affection and is about 60% done with a second one. She may have gotten mind numb too, since she set it aside and started knitting socks, her first (!), this evening. I haven’t started my Color Affection yet. I’m thinking of re-watching all my Nero Wolfe DVDs , or Inspector Morse, or Poirot while I knit mine.
I think a narrow border might be nice. When the time comes to bind off, do it with one needle and a crochet hook in the right hand. It’s faster to do a suspended bind off that way. WHICH is great for shawls as it stretches when blocked. Courage, mon ami! This is not the time to give up.
Julie in San Diego
Everyone I know who has knit one has had the same experience, but loved the final result. Some are even on their 4th or 5th! Don’t give up now, I want to see it when it’s finished. 🙂
Good thing you posted about this today, because I just finished a cardigan and was considering Color Affection as my next project. After reading your post I am pretty sure I want to tackle something else.
Well, this is good to know about Color Affection, this mind-numbing knitting, since it is in my queue and has been for a while. It will be lovely though when it is finished and will probably be your best cuddly shawl to wrap around your shoulders as you walk the Promenade deck on your next cruise. 😉 Might I suggest Foyles War for your Marathon Knitting…..I have watched that British series at least four times now, all 8 seasons.
Oh, your Color Affection is looking beautiful!! It will be well worth all the mind numbing knitting when you are done. Not much more to go now!
Keep your eye on the prize! It’s going to be a beautiful shawl. 🙂
Shows on Netflix you could check out off the top of my head: Royal Pains, Revenge, and Last Tango in Halifax. Enjoy!
My Color Affection is the victim of starting two many projects at once simply because I was burned out on knitting fingerless gloves. It WILL get done… some day. I really don’t mind boring knits as long as I can watch TV or listen to an audio book.
You’ve given me courage to finish mine. Or more accurately start again. I frogged mine when I didn’t like the color choices as well as I thought I did.